Sound and complete axiomatizations of coalgebraic language equivalence

Coalgebras provide a uniform framework to study dynamical systems, including several types of automata. In this paper, we make use of the coalgebraic view on systems to investigate, in a uniform way, under which conditions calculi that are sound and complete with respect to behavioral equivalence can be extended to a coarser coalgebraic language equivalence, which arises from a generalised powerset construction that determinises coalgebras. We show that soundness and completeness are established by proving that expressions modulo axioms of a calculus form the rational fixpoint of the given type functor. Our main result is that the rational fixpoint of the functor $FT$, where $T$ is a monad describing the branching of the systems (e.g. non-determinism, weights, probability etc.), has as a quotient the rational fixpoint of the "determinised" type functor $\bar F$, a lifting of $F$ to the category of $T$-algebras. We apply our framework to the concrete example of weighted automata, for which we present a new sound and complete calculus for weighted language equivalence. As a special case, we obtain non-deterministic automata, where we recover Rabinovich's sound and complete calculus for language equivalence.Comment: Corrected version of published journal articl

The Power of Convex Algebras

Probabilistic automata (PA) combine probability and nondeterminism. They can be given different semantics, like strong bisimilarity, convex bisimilarity, or (more recently) distribution bisimilarity. The latter is based on the view of PA as transformers of probability distributions, also called belief states, and promotes distributions to first-class citizens. We give a coalgebraic account of the latter semantics, and explain the genesis of the belief-state transformer from a PA. To do so, we make explicit the convex algebraic structure present in PA and identify belief-state transformers as transition systems with state space that carries a convex algebra. As a consequence of our abstract approach, we can give a sound proof technique which we call bisimulation up-to convex hull.Comment: Full (extended) version of a CONCUR 2017 paper, to be submitted to LMC

Weak bisimulation for coalgebras over order enriched monads

The paper introduces the notion of a weak bisimulation for coalgebras whose type is a monad satisfying some extra properties. In the first part of the paper we argue that systems with silent moves should be modelled coalgebraically as coalgebras whose type is a monad. We show that the visible and invisible part of the functor can be handled internally inside a monadic structure. In the second part we introduce the notion of an ordered saturation monad, study its properties, and show that it allows us to present two approaches towards defining weak bisimulation for coalgebras and compare them. We support the framework presented in this paper by two main examples of models: labelled transition systems and simple Segala systems.Comment: 44 page

Up-To Techniques for Behavioural Metrics via Fibrations

Up-to techniques are a well-known method for enhancing coinductive proofs of behavioural equivalences. We introduce up-to techniques for behavioural metrics between systems modelled as coalgebras and we provide abstract results to prove their soundness in a compositional way. In order to obtain a general framework, we need a systematic way to lift functors: we show that the Wasserstein lifting of a functor, introduced in a previous work, corresponds to a change of base in a fibrational sense. This observation enables us to reuse existing results about soundness of up-to techniques in a fibrational setting. We focus on the fibrations of predicates and relations valued in a quantale, for which pseudo-metric spaces are an example. To illustrate our approach we provide an example on distances between regular languages