On the expressiveness of forwarding in higher-order communication

Abstract. In higher-order process calculi the values exchanged in communications may contain processes. There are only two capabilities for received processes: execution and forwarding. Here we propose a limited form of forwarding: output actions can only communicate the parallel composition of statically known closed processes and processes received through previously executed input actions. We study the expressiveness of a higher-order process calculus featuring this style of communication. Our main result shows that in this calculus termination is decidable while convergence is undecidable.

Separability in the Ambient Logic

The \it{Ambient Logic} (AL) has been proposed for expressing properties of process mobility in the calculus of Mobile Ambients (MA), and as a basis for query languages on semistructured data. We study some basic questions concerning the discriminating power of AL, focusing on the equivalence on processes induced by the logic $(=_L>)$. As underlying calculi besides MA we consider a subcalculus in which an image-finiteness condition holds and that we prove to be Turing complete. Synchronous variants of these calculi are studied as well. In these calculi, we provide two operational characterisations of $_=L$: a coinductive one (as a form of bisimilarity) and an inductive one (based on structual properties of processes). After showing $_=L$ to be stricly finer than barbed congruence, we establish axiomatisations of $_=L$ on the subcalculus of MA (both the asynchronous and the synchronous version), enabling us to relate $_=L$ to structural congruence. We also present some (un)decidability results that are related to the above separation properties for AL: the undecidability of $_=L$ on MA and its decidability on the subcalculus.Comment: logical methods in computer science, 44 page

On the Expressive Power of Movement and Restriction in Pure Mobile Ambients

AbstractPure mobile ambients is a process calculus suitable to focus on issues related to mobility, abstracting away from aspects concerning process communication. However, it incorporates name restriction (i.e. the (νn) binder) and ambient movement (i.e. the in and out capabilities) that can be seen as characteristics adapted, or directly borrowed, from the tradition of communication-based process calculi. For this reason, we retain that it is worth to investigate whether or not these features can be removed from pure mobile ambients without losing expressive power.To this aim, we consider two variants of pure mobile ambients which differ in the way infinite processes can be defined; the former exploits process replication, while the latter is more general and permits recursive process definition. We analyse whether or not the elimination of ambient movement and/or name restriction reduces the expressive power of these two calculi, using the decidability of process termination as a yardstick. We prove that name restriction can be removed from both calculi without reducing the expressive power. On the other hand, the elimination of both ambient movement and name restriction strictly reduces the expressive power of both calculi. As far as the elimination of only ambient movement is concerned, we prove an interesting discrimination result: process termination is undecidable under recursive process definition, while it turns out to be decidable under process replication