Authors: Giorgio Bacci ; Giovanni Bacci ; Kim G. Larsen ; Radu Mardare

In this paper we propose a complete axiomatization of the bisimilarity distance of Desharnais et al. for the class of finite labelled Markov chains.
Our axiomatization is given in the style of a quantitative extension of equational logic recently proposed by Mardare, Panangaden, and Plotkin (LICS 2016) that uses equality relations $t \equiv_\varepsilon s$ indexed by rationals, expressing that `$t$ is approximately equal to $s$ up to an error $\varepsilon$'. Notably, our quantitative deduction system extends in a natural way the equational system for probabilistic bisimilarity given by Stark and Smolka by introducing an axiom for dealing with the Kantorovich distance between probability distributions. The axiomatization is then used to propose a metric extension of a Kleene's style representation theorem for finite labelled Markov chains, that was proposed (in a more general coalgebraic fashion) by Silva et al. (Inf. Comput. 2011).

Comment: Logical Methods in Computer Science

• 03B70 - Logic in computer science
• 60J20 - Applications of Markov chains and discrete-time Markov processes on general state spaces (social mobility, learning theory, industrial processes, etc.)
• 68Q85 - Models and methods for concurrent and distributed computing (process algebras, bisimulation, transition nets, etc.)
• 68Q87 - Probability in computer science (algorithm analysis, random structures, phase transitions, etc.)