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Volume 9, Issue 3
2013
1. Graph Logics with Rational Relations
We investigate some basic questions about the interaction of regular and rational relations on words. The primary motivation comes from the study of logics for querying graph topology, which have recently found numerous applications. Such logics use conditions on paths expressed by regular languages and relations, but they often need to be extended by rational relations such as subword or subsequence. Evaluating formulae in such extended graph logics boils down to checking nonemptiness of the intersection of rational relations with regular or recognizable relations (or, more generally, to the generalized intersection problem, asking whether some projections of a regular relation have a nonempty intersection with a given rational relation). We prove that for several basic and commonly used rational relations, the intersection problem with regular relations is either undecidable (e.g., for subword or suffix, and some generalizations), or decidable with non-primitive-recursive complexity (e.g., for subsequence and its generalizations). These results are used to rule out many classes of graph logics that freely combine regular and rational relations, as well as to provide the simplest problem related to verifying lossy channel systems that has non-primitive-recursive complexity. We then prove a dichotomy result for logics combining regular conditions on individual paths and rational relations on paths, by showing that the syntactic form of formulae classifies them into either […]
2. 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.
3. Regular Cost Functions, Part I: Logic and Algebra over Words
The theory of regular cost functions is a quantitative extension to the classical notion of regularity. A cost function associates to each input a non-negative integer value (or infinity), as opposed to languages which only associate to each input the two values "inside" and "outside". This theory is a continuation of the works on distance automata and similar models. These models of automata have been successfully used for solving the star-height problem, the finite power property, the finite substitution problem, the relative inclusion star-height problem and the boundedness problem for monadic-second order logic over words. Our notion of regularity can be -- as in the classical theory of regular languages -- equivalently defined in terms of automata, expressions, algebraic recognisability, and by a variant of the monadic second-order logic. These equivalences are strict extensions of the corresponding classical results. The present paper introduces the cost monadic logic, the quantitative extension to the notion of monadic second-order logic we use, and show that some problems of existence of bounds are decidable for this logic. This is achieved by introducing the corresponding algebraic formalism: stabilisation monoids.
4. Modal Interface Automata
De Alfaro and Henzinger's Interface Automata (IA) and Nyman et al.'s recent combination IOMTS of IA and Larsen's Modal Transition Systems (MTS) are established frameworks for specifying interfaces of system components. However, neither IA nor IOMTS consider conjunction that is needed in practice when a component shall satisfy multiple interfaces, while Larsen's MTS-conjunction is not closed and Beneš et al.'s conjunction on disjunctive MTS does not treat internal transitions. In addition, IOMTS-parallel composition exhibits a compositionality defect. This article defines conjunction (and also disjunction) on IA and disjunctive MTS and proves the operators to be 'correct', i.e., the greatest lower bounds (least upper bounds) wrt. IA- and resp. MTS-refinement. As its main contribution, a novel interface theory called Modal Interface Automata (MIA) is introduced: MIA is a rich subset of IOMTS featuring explicit output-must-transitions while input-transitions are always allowed implicitly, is equipped with compositional parallel, conjunction and disjunction operators, and allows a simpler embedding of IA than Nyman's. Thus, it fixes the shortcomings of related work, without restricting designers to deterministic interfaces as Raclet et al.'s modal interface theory does.
5. Computably regular topological spaces
This article continues the study of computable elementary topology started by the author and T. Grubba in 2009 and extends the author's 2010 study of axioms of computable separation. Several computable T3- and Tychonoff separation axioms are introduced and their logical relation is investigated. A number of implications between these axioms are proved and several implications are excluded by counter examples, however, many questions have not yet been answered. Known results on computable metrization of T3-spaces from M. Schr/"oder (1998) and T. Grubba, M. Schr/"oder and the author (2007) are proved under uniform assumptions and with partly simpler proofs, in particular, the theorem that every computably regular computable topological space with non-empty base elements can be embedded into a computable metric space. Most of the computable separation axioms remain true for finite products of spaces.
6. Indexed Induction and Coinduction, Fibrationally
This paper extends the fibrational approach to induction and coinduction pioneered by Hermida and Jacobs, and developed by the current authors, in two key directions. First, we present a dual to the sound induction rule for inductive types that we developed previously. That is, we present a sound coinduction rule for any data type arising as the carrier of the final coalgebra of a functor, thus relaxing Hermida and Jacobs' restriction to polynomial functors. To achieve this we introduce the notion of a quotient category with equality (QCE) that i) abstracts the standard notion of a fibration of relations constructed from a given fibration; and ii) plays a role in the theory of coinduction dual to that played by a comprehension category with unit (CCU) in the theory of induction. Secondly, we show that inductive and coinductive indexed types also admit sound induction and coinduction rules. Indexed data types often arise as carriers of initial algebras and final coalgebras of functors on slice categories, so we give sufficient conditions under which we can construct, from a CCU (QCE) U:E \rightarrow B, a fibration with base B/I that models indexing by I and is also a CCU (resp., QCE). We finish the paper by considering the more general case of sound induction and coinduction rules for indexed data types when the indexing is itself given by a fibration.
7. Universal codes of the natural numbers
A code of the natural numbers is a uniquely-decodable binary code of the natural numbers with non-decreasing codeword lengths, which satisfies Kraft's inequality tightly. We define a natural partial order on the set of codes, and show how to construct effectively a code better than a given sequence of codes, in a certain precise sense. As an application, we prove that the existence of a scale of codes (a well-ordered set of codes which contains a code better than any given code) is independent of ZFC.
8. Algebraic Structure of Combined Traces
Traces and their extension called combined traces (comtraces) are two formal models used in the analysis and verification of concurrent systems. Both models are based on concepts originating in the theory of formal languages, and they are able to capture the notions of causality and simultaneity of atomic actions which take place during the process of a system's operation. The aim of this paper is a transfer to the domain of comtraces and developing of some fundamental notions, which proved to be successful in the theory of traces. In particular, we introduce and then apply the notion of indivisible steps, the lexicographical canonical form of comtraces, as well as the representation of a comtrace utilising its linear projections to binary action subalphabets. We also provide two algorithms related to the new notions. Using them, one can solve, in an efficient way, the problem of step sequence equivalence in the context of comtraces. One may view our results as a first step towards the development of infinite combined traces, as well as recognisable languages of combined traces.
9. Computability of Probability Distributions and Characteristic Functions
As a part of our works on effective properties of probability distributions, we deal with the corresponding characteristic functions. A sequence of probability distributions is computable if and only if the corresponding sequence of characteristic functions is computable. As for the onvergence problem, the effectivized Glivenko's theorem holds. Effectivizations of Bochner's theorem and de Moivre-Laplace central limit theorem are also proved.
10. Cartesian closed 2-categories and permutation equivalence in higher-order rewriting
We propose a semantics for permutation equivalence in higher-order rewriting. This semantics takes place in cartesian closed 2-categories, and is proved sound and complete.
11. Measure Transformer Semantics for Bayesian Machine Learning
The Bayesian approach to machine learning amounts to computing posterior distributions of random variables from a probabilistic model of how the variables are related (that is, a prior distribution) and a set of observations of variables. There is a trend in machine learning towards expressing Bayesian models as probabilistic programs. As a foundation for this kind of programming, we propose a core functional calculus with primitives for sampling prior distributions and observing variables. We define measure-transformer combinators inspired by theorems in measure theory, and use these to give a rigorous semantics to our core calculus. The original features of our semantics include its support for discrete, continuous, and hybrid measures, and, in particular, for observations of zero-probability events. We compile our core language to a small imperative language that is processed by an existing inference engine for factor graphs, which are data structures that enable many efficient inference algorithms. This allows efficient approximate inference of posterior marginal distributions, treating thousands of observations per second for large instances of realistic models.
12. Linearizability with Ownership Transfer
Linearizability is a commonly accepted notion of correctness for libraries of concurrent algorithms. Unfortunately, it assumes a complete isolation between a library and its client, with interactions limited to passing values of a given data type. This is inappropriate for common programming languages, where libraries and their clients can communicate via the heap, transferring the ownership of data structures, and can even run in a shared address space without any memory protection. In this paper, we present the first definition of linearizability that lifts this limitation and establish an Abstraction Theorem: while proving a property of a client of a concurrent library, we can soundly replace the library by its abstract implementation related to the original one by our generalisation of linearizability. This allows abstracting from the details of the library implementation while reasoning about the client. We also prove that linearizability with ownership transfer can be derived from the classical one if the library does not access some of data structures transferred to it by the client.
13. Reachability Problem for Weak Multi-Pushdown Automata
This paper is about reachability analysis in a restricted subclass of multi-pushdown automata. We assume that the control states of an automaton are partially ordered, and all transitions of an automaton go downwards with respect to the order. We prove decidability of the reachability problem, and computability of the backward reachability set. As the main contribution, we identify relevant subclasses where the reachability problem becomes NP-complete. This matches the complexity of the same problem for communication-free vector addition systems, a special case of stateless multi-pushdown automata.
14. Coalgebraic Characterizations of Context-Free Languages
In this article, we provide three coalgebraic characterizations of the class of context-free languages, each based on the idea of adding coalgebraic structure to an existing algebraic structure by specifying output-derivative pairs. Final coalgebra semantics then gives an interpretation function into the final coalgebra of all languages with the usual output and derivative operations. The first characterization is based on systems, where each derivative is given as a finite language over the set of nonterminals; the second characterization on systems where derivatives are given as elements of a term-algebra; and the third characterization is based on adding coalgebraic structure to a class of closed (unique) fixed point expressions. We prove equivalences between these characterizations, discuss the generalization from languages to formal power series, as well as the relationship to the generalized powerset construction.
15. Pebble Games, Proof Complexity, and Time-Space Trade-offs
Pebble games were extensively studied in the 1970s and 1980s in a number of different contexts. The last decade has seen a revival of interest in pebble games coming from the field of proof complexity. Pebbling has proven to be a useful tool for studying resolution-based proof systems when comparing the strength of different subsystems, showing bounds on proof space, and establishing size-space trade-offs. This is a survey of research in proof complexity drawing on results and tools from pebbling, with a focus on proof space lower bounds and trade-offs between proof size and proof space.
16. Connector algebras for C/E and P/T nets' interactions
A quite flourishing research thread in the recent literature on component-based systems is concerned with the algebraic properties of different classes of connectors. In a recent paper, an algebra of stateless connectors was presented that consists of five kinds of basic connectors, namely symmetry, synchronization, mutual exclusion, hiding and inaction, plus their duals, and it was shown how they can be freely composed in series and in parallel to model sophisticated 'glues'. In this paper we explore the expressiveness of stateful connectors obtained by adding one-place buffers or unbounded buffers to the stateless connectors. The main results are: i) we show how different classes of connectors exactly correspond to suitable classes of Petri nets equipped with compositional interfaces, called nets with boundaries; ii) we show that the difference between strong and weak semantics in stateful connectors is reflected in the semantics of nets with boundaries by moving from the classic step semantics (strong case) to a novel banking semantics (weak case), where a step can be executed by taking some 'debit' tokens to be given back during the same step; iii) we show that the corresponding bisimilarities are congruences (w.r.t. composition of connectors in series and in parallel); iv) we show that suitable monoidality laws, like those arising when representing stateful connectors in the tile model, can nicely capture concurrency (in the sense of step semantics) […]
17. On Characterising Distributability
We formalise a general concept of distributed systems as sequential components interacting asynchronously. We define a corresponding class of Petri nets, called LSGA nets, and precisely characterise those system specifications which can be implemented as LSGA nets up to branching ST-bisimilarity with explicit divergence.
18. A Polynomial Translation of pi-calculus FCPs to Safe Petri Nets
We develop a polynomial translation from finite control pi-calculus processes to safe low-level Petri nets. To our knowledge, this is the first such translation. It is natural in that there is a close correspondence between the control flows, enjoys a bisimulation result, and is suitable for practical model checking.
19. Automatic functions, linear time and learning
The present work determines the exact nature of {\em linear time computable} notions which characterise automatic functions (those whose graphs are recognised by a finite automaton). The paper also determines which type of linear time notions permit full learnability for learning in the limit of automatic classes (families of languages which are uniformly recognised by a finite automaton). In particular it is shown that a function is automatic iff there is a one-tape Turing machine with a left end which computes the function in linear time where the input before the computation and the output after the computation both start at the left end. It is known that learners realised as automatic update functions are restrictive for learning. In the present work it is shown that one can overcome the problem by providing work tapes additional to a resource-bounded base tape while keeping the update-time to be linear in the length of the largest datum seen so far. In this model, one additional such work tape provides additional learning power over the automatic learner model and two additional work tapes give full learning power. Furthermore, one can also consider additional queues or additional stacks in place of additional work tapes and for these devices, one queue or two stacks are sufficient for full learning power while one stack is insufficient.
20. Induction in Algebra: a First Case Study
Many a concrete theorem of abstract algebra admits a short and elegant proof by contradiction but with Zorn's Lemma (ZL). A few of these theorems have recently turned out to follow in a direct and elementary way from the Principle of Open Induction distinguished by Raoult. The ideal objects characteristic of any invocation of ZL are eliminated, and it is made possible to pass from classical to intuitionistic logic. If the theorem has finite input data, then a finite partial order carries the required instance of induction, which thus is constructively provable. A typical example is the well-known theorem "every nonconstant coefficient of an invertible polynomial is nilpotent".
21. Reachability under Contextual Locking
The pairwise reachability problem for a multi-threaded program asks, given control locations in two threads, whether they can be simultaneously reached in an execution of the program. The problem is important for static analysis and is used to detect statements that are concurrently enabled. This problem is in general undecidable even when data is abstracted and when the threads (with recursion) synchronize only using a finite set of locks. Popular programming paradigms that limit the lock usage patterns have been identified under which the pairwise reachability problem becomes decidable. In this paper, we consider a new natural programming paradigm, called contextual locking, which ties the lock usage to calling patterns in each thread: we assume that locks are released in the same context that they were acquired and that every lock acquired by a thread in a procedure call is released before the procedure returns. Our main result is that the pairwise reachability problem is polynomial-time decidable for this new programming paradigm as well. The problem becomes undecidable if the locks are reentrant; reentrant locking is a \emph{recursive locking} mechanism which allows a thread in a multi-threaded program to acquire the reentrant lock multiple times.
22. Exploring the Boundaries of Monad Tensorability on Set
We study a composition operation on monads, equivalently presented as large equational theories. Specifically, we discuss the existence of tensors, which are combinations of theories that impose mutual commutation of the operations from the component theories. As such, they extend the sum of two theories, which is just their unrestrained combination. Tensors of theories arise in several contexts; in particular, in the semantics of programming languages, the monad transformer for global state is given by a tensor. We present two main results: we show that the tensor of two monads need not in general exist by presenting two counterexamples, one of them involving finite powerset (i.e. the theory of join semilattices); this solves a somewhat long-standing open problem, and contrasts with recent results that had ruled out previously expected counterexamples. On the other hand, we show that tensors with bounded powerset monads do exist from countable powerset upwards.
23. Bases as Coalgebras
The free algebra adjunction, between the category of algebras of a monad and the underlying category, induces a comonad on the category of algebras. The coalgebras of this comonad are the topic of study in this paper (following earlier work). It is illustrated how such coalgebras-on-algebras can be understood as bases, decomposing each element x into primitives elements from which x can be reconstructed via the operations of the algebra. This holds in particular for the free vector space monad, but also for other monads, like powerset or distribution. For instance, continuous dcpos or stably continuous frames, where each element is the join of the elements way below it, can be described as such coalgebras. Further, it is shown how these coalgebras-on-algebras give rise to a comonoid structure for copy and delete, and thus to diagonalisation of endomaps like in linear algebra.
24. A Static Analysis Framework for Livelock Freedom in CSP
In a process algebra with hiding and recursion it is possible to create processes which compute internally without ever communicating with their environment. Such processes are said to diverge or livelock. In this paper we show how it is possible to conservatively classify processes as livelock-free through a static analysis of their syntax. In particular, we present a collection of rules, based on the inductive structure of terms, which guarantee livelock-freedom of the denoted process. This gives rise to an algorithm which conservatively flags processes that can potentially livelock. We illustrate our approach by applying both BDD-based and SAT-based implementations of our algorithm to a range of benchmarks, and show that our technique in general substantially outperforms the model checker FDR whilst exhibiting a low rate of inconclusive results.
25. Unary negation
We study fragments of first-order logic and of least fixed point logic that allow only unary negation: negation of formulas with at most one free variable. These logics generalize many interesting known formalisms, including modal logic and the $\mu$-calculus, as well as conjunctive queries and monadic Datalog. We show that satisfiability and finite satisfiability are decidable for both fragments, and we pinpoint the complexity of satisfiability, finite satisfiability, and model checking. We also show that the unary negation fragment of first-order logic is model-theoretically very well behaved. In particular, it enjoys Craig Interpolation and the Projective Beth Property.
26. Modelling Probabilistic Wireless Networks
We propose a process calculus to model high level wireless systems, where the topology of a network is described by a digraph. The calculus enjoys features which are proper of wireless networks, namely broadcast communication and probabilistic behaviour. We first focus on the problem of composing wireless networks, then we present a compositional theory based on a probabilistic generalisation of the well known may-testing and must-testing pre- orders. Also, we define an extensional semantics for our calculus, which will be used to define both simulation and deadlock simulation preorders for wireless networks. We prove that our simulation preorder is sound with respect to the may-testing preorder; similarly, the deadlock simulation pre- order is sound with respect to the must-testing preorder, for a large class of networks. We also provide a counterexample showing that completeness of the simulation preorder, with respect to the may testing one, does not hold. We conclude the paper with an application of our theory to probabilistic routing protocols.
27. Randomness extraction and asymptotic Hamming distance
We obtain a non-implication result in the Medvedev degrees by studying sequences that are close to Martin-Löf random in asymptotic Hamming distance. Our result is that the class of stochastically bi-immune sets is not Medvedev reducible to the class of sets having complex packing dimension 1.
28. Abstract GSOS Rules and a Modular Treatment of Recursive Definitions
Terminal coalgebras for a functor serve as semantic domains for state-based systems of various types. For example, behaviors of CCS processes, streams, infinite trees, formal languages and non-well-founded sets form terminal coalgebras. We present a uniform account of the semantics of recursive definitions in terminal coalgebras by combining two ideas: (1) abstract GSOS rules l specify additional algebraic operations on a terminal coalgebra; (2) terminal coalgebras are also initial completely iterative algebras (cias). We also show that an abstract GSOS rule leads to new extended cia structures on the terminal coalgebra. Then we formalize recursive function definitions involving given operations specified by l as recursive program schemes for l, and we prove that unique solutions exist in the extended cias. From our results it follows that the solutions of recursive (function) definitions in terminal coalgebras may be used in subsequent recursive definitions which still have unique solutions. We call this principle modularity. We illustrate our results by the five concrete terminal coalgebras mentioned above, e.\,g., a finite stream circuit defines a unique stream function.
29. Alternating Turing machines for inductive languages
We show that alternating Turing machines, with a novel and natural definition of acceptance, accept precisely the inductive (Pi-1-1) languages. Total alternating machines, that either accept or reject each input, accept precisely the hyper-elementary (Delta-1-1) languages. Moreover, bounding the permissible number of alternations yields a characterization of the levels of the arithmetical hierarchy. Notably, these results use simple finite computing devices, with finitary and discrete operational semantics, and neither the results nor their proofs make any use of transfinite ordinals. Our characterizations elucidate the analogy between the polynomial-time hierarchy and the arithmetical hierarchy, as well as between their respective limits, namely polynomial-space and Pi-1-1.