Well-Pointed Coalgebras

For endofunctors of varieties preserving intersections, a new description of the final coalgebra and the initial algebra is presented: the former consists of all well-pointed coalgebras. These are the pointed coalgebras having no proper subobject and no proper quotient. The initial algebra consists of all well-pointed coalgebras that are well-founded in the sense of Osius and Taylor. And initial algebras are precisely the final well-founded coalgebras. Finally, the initial iterative algebra consists of all finite well-pointed coalgebras. Numerous examples are discussed e.g. automata, graphs, and labeled transition systems

The Sierpinski Carpet as a Final Coalgebra

We advance the program of connections between final coalgebras as sources of circularity in mathematics and fractal sets of real numbers. In particular, we are interested in the Sierpinski carpet, taking it as a fractal subset of the unit square. We construct a category of square sets and an endofunctor on it which corresponds to the operation of gluing copies of a square set along segments. We show that the initial algebra and final coalgebra exist for our functor, and that the final coalgebra is bi-Lipschitz equivalent to the Sierpinski carpet. Along the way, we make connections to topics such as the iterative construction of initial algebras as colimits, corecursive algebras, and the classic treatment of fractal sets due to Hutchinson.Comment: In Proceedings ACT 2021, arXiv:2211.0110

Precongruences and Parametrized Coinduction for Logics for Behavioral Equivalence

We present a new proof system for equality of terms which present elements of the final coalgebra of a finitary set functor. This is most important when the functor is finitary, and we improve on logical systems which have already been proposed in several papers. Our contributions here are (1) a new logical rule which makes for proofs which are somewhat easier to find, and (2) a soundness/completeness theorem which works for all finitary functors, in particular removing a weak pullback preservation requirement that had been used previously. Our work is based on properties of precongruence relations and also on a new parametrized coinduction principle

On Well-Founded and Recursive Coalgebras

This paper studies fundamental questions concerning category-theoretic models of induction and recursion. We are concerned with the relationship between well-founded and recursive coalgebras for an endofunctor. For monomorphism preserving endofunctors on complete and well-powered categories every coalgebra has a well-founded part, and we provide a new, shorter proof that this is the coreflection in the category of all well-founded coalgebras. We present a new more general proof of Taylor's General Recursion Theorem that every well-founded coalgebra is recursive, and we study under which hypothesis the converse holds. In addition, we present a new equivalent characterization of well-foundedness: a coalgebra is well-founded iff it admits a coalgebra-to-algebra morphism to the initial algebra

Fractals from Regular Behaviours

We are interested in connections between the theory of fractal sets obtained as attractors of iterated function systems and process calculi. To this end, we reinterpret Milner's expressions for processes as contraction operators on a complete metric space. When the space is, for example, the plane, the denotations of fixed point terms correspond to familiar fractal sets. We give a sound and complete axiomatization of fractal equivalence, the congruence on terms consisting of pairs that construct identical self-similar sets in all interpretations. We further make connections to labelled Markov chains and to invariant measures. In all of this work, we use important results from process calculi. For example, we use Rabinovich's completeness theorem for trace equivalence in our own completeness theorem. In addition to our results, we also raise many questions related to both fractals and process calculi