On the theory of composition in physics

We develop a theory for describing composite objects in physics. These can be static objects, such as tables, or things that happen in spacetime (such as a region of spacetime with fields on it regarded as being composed of smaller such regions joined together). We propose certain fundamental axioms which, it seems, should be satisfied in any theory of composition. A key axiom is the order independence axiom which says we can describe the composition of a composite object in any order. Then we provide a notation for describing composite objects that naturally leads to these axioms being satisfied. In any given physical context we are interested in the value of certain properties for the objects (such as whether the object is possible, what probability it has, how wide it is, and so on). We associate a generalized state with an object. This can be used to calculate the value of those properties we are interested in for for this object. We then propose a certain principle, the composition principle, which says that we can determine the generalized state of a composite object from the generalized states for the components by means of a calculation having the same structure as the description of the generalized state. The composition principle provides a link between description and prediction.Comment: 23 pages. To appear in a festschrift for Samson Abramsky edited by Bob Coecke, Luke Ong, and Prakash Panangade

Focusing in Asynchronous Games

Game semantics provides an interactive point of view on proofs, which enables one to describe precisely their dynamical behavior during cut elimination, by considering formulas as games on which proofs induce strategies. We are specifically interested here in relating two such semantics of linear logic, of very different flavor, which both take in account concurrent features of the proofs: asynchronous games and concurrent games. Interestingly, we show that associating a concurrent strategy to an asynchronous strategy can be seen as a semantical counterpart of the focusing property of linear logic

Nuclear and Trace Ideals in Tensored *-Categories

We generalize the notion of nuclear maps from functional analysis by defining nuclear ideals in tensored *-categories. The motivation for this study came from attempts to generalize the structure of the category of relations to handle what might be called ``probabilistic relations''. The compact closed structure associated with the category of relations does not generalize directly, instead one obtains nuclear ideals. We introduce the notion of nuclear ideal to analyze these classes of morphisms. In compact closed categories, we see that all morphisms are nuclear, and in the category of Hilbert spaces, the nuclear morphisms are the Hilbert-Schmidt maps. We also introduce two new examples of tensored *-categories, in which integration plays the role of composition. In the first, morphisms are a special class of distributions, which we call tame distributions. We also introduce a category of probabilistic relations which was the original motivating example. Finally, we extend the recent work of Joyal, Street and Verity on traced monoidal categories to this setting by introducing the notion of a trace ideal. For a given symmetric monoidal category, it is not generally the case that arbitrary endomorphisms can be assigned a trace. However, we can find ideals in the category on which a trace can be defined satisfying equations analogous to those of Joyal, Street and Verity. We establish a close correspondence between nuclear ideals and trace ideals in a tensored *-category, suggested by the correspondence between Hilbert-Schmidt operators and trace operators on a Hilbert space.Comment: 43 pages, Revised versio

A theory for game theories

International audienceGame semantics is a valuable source of fully abstract models of programming languages or proof theories based on categories of so-called games and strategies. However, there are many variants of this technique, whose interrelationships largely remain to be elucidated. This raises the question: what is a category of games and strategies? Our central idea, taken from the first author's PhD thesis, is that positions and moves in a game should be morphisms in a base category: playing move m in position f consists in factoring f through m, the new position being the other factor. Accordingly, we provide a general construction which, from a selection of "legal moves" in an almost arbitrary category, produces a category of games and strategies, together with subcategories of deterministic and winning strategies. As our running example, we instantiate our construction to obtain the standard category of Hyland-Ong games subject to the switching condition. The extension of our framework to games without the switching condition is handled in the first author's PhD thesis

Formal concept analysis and structures underlying quantum logics

A Hilbert space $H$ induces a formal context, the Hilbert formal context $\overline H$, whose associated concept lattice is isomorphic to the lattice of closed subspaces of $H$. This set of closed subspaces, denoted $\mathcal C(H)$, is important in the development of quantum logic and, as an algebraic structure, corresponds to a so-called ``propositional system'', that is, a complete, atomistic, orthomodular lattice which satisfies the covering law. In this paper, we continue with our study of the Chu construction by introducing the Chu correspondences between Hilbert contexts, and showing that the category of Propositional Systems, PropSys, is equivalent to the category of $\text{ChuCors}_{\mathcal H}$ of Chu correspondences between Hilbert contextsUniversidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Relating structure and power: Comonadic semantics for computational resources

Combinatorial games are widely used in finite model theory, constraint satisfaction, modal logic and concurrency theory to characterize logical equivalences between structures. In particular, Ehrenfeucht–Fraïssé games, pebble games and bisimulation games play a central role. We show how each of these types of games can be described in terms of an indexed family of comonads on the category of relational structures and homomorphisms. The index k is a resource parameter that bounds the degree of access to the underlying structure. The coKleisli categories for these comonads can be used to give syntax-free characterizations of a wide range of important logical equivalences. Moreover, the coalgebras for these indexed comonads can be used to characterize key combinatorial parameters: tree depth for the Ehrenfeucht–Fraïssé comonad, tree width for the pebbling comonad and synchronization tree depth for the modal unfolding comonad. These results pave the way for systematic connections between two major branches of the field of logic in computer science, which hitherto have been almost disjoint: categorical semantics and finite and algorithmic model theory

An Operational Interpretation of Negative Probabilities and No-Signalling Models

Negative probabilities have long been discussed in connection with the foundations of quantum mechanics. We have recently shown that, if signed measures are allowed on the hidden variables, the class of probability models which can be captured by local hidden-variable models are exactly the no-signalling models. However, the question remains of how negative probabilities are to be interpreted. In this paper, we present an operational interpretation of negative probabilities as arising from standard probabilities on signed events. This leads, by virtue of our previous result, to a systematic scheme for simulating arbitrary no-signalling models.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure

Arboreal Categories: an Axiomatic Theory of Resources

Game comonads provide a categorical syntax-free approach to finite model theory, and their Eilenberg-Moore coalgebras typically encode important combinatorial parameters of structures. In this paper, we develop a framework whereby the essential properties of these categories of coalgebras are captured in a purely axiomatic fashion. To this end, we introduce arboreal categories, which have an intrinsic process structure, allowing dynamic notions such as bisimulation and back-and-forth games, and resource notions such as number of rounds of a game, to be defined. These are related to extensional or “static” structures via arboreal covers, which are resource-indexed comonadic adjunctions. These ideas are developed in a general, axiomatic setting, and applied to relational structures, where the comonadic constructions for pebbling, Ehrenfeucht-Fraïssé and modal bisimulation games recently introduced by Abramsky, Dawar et al. are recovered, showing that many of the fundamental notions of finite model theory and descriptive complexity arise from instances of arboreal covers

Fragments of ML Decidable by Nested Data Class Memory Automata

The call-by-value language RML may be viewed as a canonical restriction of Standard ML to ground-type references, augmented by a "bad variable" construct in the sense of Reynolds. We consider the fragment of (finitary) RML terms of order at most 1 with free variables of order at most 2, and identify two subfragments of this for which we show observational equivalence to be decidable. The first subfragment consists of those terms in which the P-pointers in the game semantic representation are determined by the underlying sequence of moves. The second subfragment consists of terms in which the O-pointers of moves corresponding to free variables in the game semantic representation are determined by the underlying moves. These results are shown using a reduction to a form of automata over data words in which the data values have a tree-structure, reflecting the tree-structure of the threads in the game semantic plays. In addition we show that observational equivalence is undecidable at every third- or higher-order type, every second-order type which takes at least two first-order arguments, and every second-order type (of arity greater than one) that has a first-order argument which is not the final argument

A New Linear Logic for Deadlock-Free Session-Typed Processes

The π -calculus, viewed as a core concurrent programming language, has been used as the target of much research on type systems for concurrency. In this paper we propose a new type system for deadlock-free session-typed π -calculus processes, by integrating two separate lines of work. The first is the propositions-as-types approach by Caires and Pfenning, which provides a linear logic foundation for session types and guarantees deadlock-freedom by forbidding cyclic process connections. The second is Kobayashi’s approach in which types are annotated with priorities so that the type system can check whether or not processes contain genuine cyclic dependencies between communication operations. We combine these two techniques for the first time, and define a new and more expressive variant of classical linear logic with a proof assignment that gives a session type system with Kobayashi-style priorities. This can be seen in three ways: (i) as a new linear logic in which cyclic structures can be derived and a CYCLE -elimination theorem generalises CUT -elimination; (ii) as a logically-based session type system, which is more expressive than Caires and Pfenning’s; (iii) as a logical foundation for Kobayashi’s system, bringing it into the sphere of the propositions-as-types paradigm