Ranking and Repulsing Supermartingales for Reachability in Probabilistic Programs

Computing reachability probabilities is a fundamental problem in the analysis of probabilistic programs. This paper aims at a comprehensive and comparative account on various martingale-based methods for over- and under-approximating reachability probabilities. Based on the existing works that stretch across different communities (formal verification, control theory, etc.), we offer a unifying account. In particular, we emphasize the role of order-theoretic fixed points---a classic topic in computer science---in the analysis of probabilistic programs. This leads us to two new martingale-based techniques, too. We give rigorous proofs for their soundness and completeness. We also make an experimental comparison using our implementation of template-based synthesis algorithms for those martingales

Fair Simulation for Nondeterministic and Probabilistic Buechi Automata: a Coalgebraic Perspective

Notions of simulation, among other uses, provide a computationally tractable and sound (but not necessarily complete) proof method for language inclusion. They have been comprehensively studied by Lynch and Vaandrager for nondeterministic and timed systems; for B\"{u}chi automata the notion of fair simulation has been introduced by Henzinger, Kupferman and Rajamani. We contribute to a generalization of fair simulation in two different directions: one for nondeterministic tree automata previously studied by Bomhard; and the other for probabilistic word automata with finite state spaces, both under the B\"{u}chi acceptance condition. The former nondeterministic definition is formulated in terms of systems of fixed-point equations, hence is readily translated to parity games and is then amenable to Jurdzi\'{n}ski's algorithm; the latter probabilistic definition bears a strong ranking-function flavor. These two different-looking definitions are derived from one source, namely our coalgebraic modeling of B\"{u}chi automata. Based on these coalgebraic observations, we also prove their soundness: a simulation indeed witnesses language inclusion