A Faster Tableau for CTL*

There have been several recent suggestions for tableau systems for deciding satisfiability in the practically important branching time temporal logic known as CTL*. In this paper we present a streamlined and more traditional tableau approach built upon the author's earlier theoretical work. Soundness and completeness results are proved. A prototype implementation demonstrates the significantly improved performance of the new approach on a range of test formulas. We also see that it compares favourably to state of the art, game and automata based decision procedures.Comment: In Proceedings GandALF 2013, arXiv:1307.416

Logic and model checking for hidden Markov models

The branching-time temporal logic PCTL* has been introduced to specify quantitative properties over probability systems, such as discrete-time Markov chains. Until now, however, no logics have been defined to specify properties over hidden Markov models (HMMs). In HMMs the states are hidden, and the hidden processes produce a sequence of observations. In this paper we extend the logic PCTL* to POCTL*. With our logic one can state properties such as "there is at least a 90 percent probability that the model produces a given sequence of observations" over HMMs. Subsequently, we give model checking algorithms for POCTL* over HMMs

Axiomatization of the AGM theory of belief revision in a temporal logic

It is natural to think of belief revision as the interaction of belief and information over time. Thus branching-time temporal logic seems a natural setting for a theory of belief revision. We propose two extensions of a modal logic that, besides the ""next-time"" temporal operator, contains a belief operator and an information operator. The first logic is shown to provide an axiomatization of the first six postulates of the AGM theory of belief revision, while the second, stronger, logic provides an axiomatization of the full set of AGM postulates.Belief revision, information, temporal logic, AGM theory

Four Logics for Minimal Belief Revision

It is natural to think of belief revision as the interaction of belief and information over time. Thus branching-time temporal logic seems a natural setting for a theory of belief revision. We propose a logic based on three modal operators: a belief operator, an information operator and a next-time operator. Four logics of increasing strength are proposed. The first is a logic that captures the most basic notion of minimal belief revision. The second characterizes the qualitative content of Bayes' rule. The third provides an axiomatization of the AGM theory of belief revision and the fourth provides a characterization of the notion of plausibility ordering of the set of possible worlds.

A Logical Verification Methodology for Service-Oriented Computing

We introduce a logical verification methodology for checking behavioural properties of service-oriented computing systems. Service properties are described by means of SocL, a branching-time temporal logic that we have specifically designed to express in an effective way distinctive aspects of services, such as, e.g., acceptance of a request, provision of a response, and correlation among service requests and responses. Our approach allows service properties to be expressed in such a way that they can be independent of service domains and specifications. We show an instantiation of our general methodology that uses the formal language COWS to conveniently specify services and the expressly developed software tool CMC to assist the user in the task of verifying SocL formulae over service specifications. We demonstrate feasibility and effectiveness of our methodology by means of the specification and the analysis of a case study in the automotive domain

Specification and verification of reconfiguration protocols in grid component systems

In this work we present an approach for the formal specification and verification of the reconfiguration protocols in Grid component systems. We consider Fractal, a modular and extensible component model. As a specification tool we invoke a specific temporal language, separated clausal normal form, which has been shown to be capable of expressing any ECTL+ expression thus, we are able to express the complex fairness properties of a component system. The structure of the normal enables us to directly apply the deductive verification technique, temporal resolution defined in the framework of branching-time temporal logic

Trylock, a case for temporal logic and eternity variables

An example is given of a software algorithm that implements its specification in linear time temporal logic (LTL), but not in branching time temporal logic (CTL). In LTL, a prophecy of future behaviour is needed to prove the simulation. Eternity variables are used for this purpose. The final phase of the proof is a refinement mapping in which two threads exchange roles. The example is a software implementation of trylock in a variation of the fast mutual exclusion algorithm of Lamport (1987). It has been used fruitfully for the construction of software algorithms for high performance mutual exclusion

A clausal resolution method for branching-time logic ECTL+

We expand the applicability of the clausal resolution technique to the branching-time temporal logic ECTL_. ECTL_ is strictly more expressive than the basic computation tree logic CTL and its extension, ECTL, as it allows Boolean combinations of fairness and single temporal operators. We show that any ECTL_ formula can be translated to a normal form the structure of which was initially defined for CTL and then applied to ECTL. This enables us to apply to ECTL_ a resolution technique defined over the set of clauses. Our correctness argument also bridges the gap in the correctness proof for ECTL: we show that the transformation procedure for ECTL preserves unsatisfiability