Fair Exchange in Strand Spaces

Many cryptographic protocols are intended to coordinate state changes among principals. Exchange protocols coordinate delivery of new values to the participants, e.g. additions to the set of values they possess. An exchange protocol is fair if it ensures that delivery of new values is balanced: If one participant obtains a new possession via the protocol, then all other participants will, too. Fair exchange requires progress assumptions, unlike some other protocol properties. The strand space model is a framework for design and verification of cryptographic protocols. A strand is a local behavior of a single principal in a single session of a protocol. A bundle is a partially ordered global execution built from protocol strands and adversary activities. The strand space model needs two additions for fair exchange protocols. First, we regard the state as a multiset of facts, and we allow strands to cause changes in this state via multiset rewriting. Second, progress assumptions stipulate that some channels are resilient-and guaranteed to deliver messages-and some principals are assumed not to stop at certain critical steps. This method leads to proofs of correctness that cleanly separate protocol properties, such as authentication and confidentiality, from invariants governing state evolution. G. Wang's recent fair exchange protocol illustrates the approach

Interdisciplinary Monte Carlo Simulations

Biological, linguistic, sociological and economical applications of statistical physics are reviewed here. They have been made on a variety of computers over a dozen years, not only at the NIC computers. A longer description can be found in our new book, an emphasis on teaching in Eur.J.Phys. 26, S 79 and AIP Conf. Proc. 779, 49, 56, 69 and 75.Comment: 11 pages including many Figs.; for 3rd NIC Symposium, Julich, 3/0

Decidability of quantified propositional intuitionistic logic and S4 on trees

Quantified propositional intuitionistic logic is obtained from propositional intuitionistic logic by adding quantifiers \forall p, \exists p over propositions. In the context of Kripke semantics, a proposition is a subset of the worlds in a model structure which is upward closed. Kremer (1997) has shown that the quantified propositional intuitionistic logic H\pi+ based on the class of all partial orders is recursively isomorphic to full second-order logic. He raised the question of whether the logic resulting from restriction to trees is axiomatizable. It is shown that it is, in fact, decidable. The methods used can also be used to establish the decidability of modal S4 with propositional quantification on similar types of Kripke structures.Comment: v2, 9 pages, corrections and additions; v1 8 page

Comment on “CCSD study of anharmonic Raman cross sections of fundamental, overtone, and combination transitions”

Equations (36) and (37) in L. N. Vidal, P. A. M. Vazquez, Int. J. Quantum Chem. 2012, 112, 3205 are wrong. The agreement between theoretical and experimental Raman cross sections is greatly improved with use of the corrected expressions

Few-cycle spatiotemporal optical solitons in waveguide arrays

We consider the propagation of Gaussian spatiotemporal wave packets in arrays of parallel optical waveguides, assuming linear and nondispersive coupling between the adjacent guides. The numerical analysis is based on a discrete version of the modified Korteweg–de Vries equation that adequately describes the propagation of ultrashort (few-cycle) spatiotemporal solitons in waveguide arrays. Two kinds of such discrete-continuous localized wave forms, which are discrete solitons in the transverse direction, and few-cycle solitons in the longitudinal one, are put forward, namely breathing solitons and single-humped ones. The conditions of formation of these localized spatiotemporal structures, their time duration and spatial width, as well as their energies, are also investigated