Alessio Guglielmi

A system of interaction and structure

This article introduces a logical system, called BV, which extends multiplicative linear logic by a noncommutative self-dual logical operator. This extension is particularly challenging for the sequent calculus, and so far, it is not achieved therein. It becomes very natural in a new formalism, called the calculus of structures, which is the main contribution of this work. Structures are formulas subject to certain equational laws typical of sequents. The calculus of structures is obtained by generalizing the sequent calculus in such a way that a new top-down symmetry of derivations is observed, and it employs inference rules that rewrite inside structures at any depth. These properties, in addition to allowing the design of BV, yield a modular proof of cut elimination.

Non-commutativity and MELL in the Calculus of Structures

We introduce the calculus of structures: it is more general than the sequent calculus and it allows for cut elimination and the subformula property. We show a simple extension of multiplicative linear logic, by a self-dual noncommutative operator inspired by CCS, that seems not to be expressible in the sequent calculus. Then we show that multiplicative exponential linear logic benefits from its presentation in the calculus of structures, especially because we can replace the ordinary, global promotion rule by a local version. These formal systems, for which we prove cut elimination, outline a range of techniques and properties that were not previously available. Contrarily to what happens in the sequent calculus, the cut elimination proof is modular.

On the proof complexity of deep inference

We obtain two results about the proof complexity of deep inference: (1) Deep-inference proof systems are as powerful as Frege ones, even when both are extended with the Tseitin extension rule or with the substitution rule; (2) there are analytic deep-inference proof systems that exhibit an exponential speedup over analytic Gentzen proof systems that they polynomially simulate.

A Non-commutative Extension of MELL

We extend multiplicative exponential linear logic (M EL)L by a non-commutative, self-dual logical operator. The extended system, called NEL, is defined in the formalism of the calculus of structures, which is a generalisation of the sequent calculus and provides a more refined analysis of proofs. We should then be able to extend the range of applications of M EL,L by modelling a broad notion of sequentiality and providing new properties of proofs. We show some proof theoretical results: decomposition and cut elimination. The new operator represents a significant challenge: to get our results we use here for the first time some novel techniques, which constitute a uniform and modular approach to cut elimination, contrary to what is possible in the sequent calculus.

A Proof Calculus Which Reduces Syntactic Bureaucracy

In usual proof systems, like the sequent calculus, only a very limited way of combining proofs is available through the tree structure. We present in this paper a logic-independent proof calculus, where proofs can be freely composed by connectives, and prove its basic properties. The main advantage of this proof calculus is that it allows to avoid certain types of syntactic bureaucracy inherent to all usual proof systems, in particular the sequent calculus. Proofs in this system closely reflect their atomic flow, which traces the behaviour of atoms through structural rules. The general definition is illustrated by the standard deep-inference system for propositional logic, for which there are known rewriting techniques that achieve cut elimination based only on the information in atomic flows.

A system of interaction and structure IV: The exponentials and decomposition

We study a system, called NEL, which is the mixed commutative/noncommutative linear logic BV augmented with linear logics exponentials. Equivalently, NEL is MELL augmented with the noncommutative self-dual connective seq. In this article, we show a basic compositionality property of NEL, which we call decomposition. This result leads to a cut-elimination theorem, which is proved in the next article of this series. To control the induction measure for the theorem, we rely on a novel technique that extracts from NEL proofs the structure of exponentials, into what we call !-?-Flow-Graphs.

A quasipolynomial cut-elimination procedure in deep inference via atomic flows and threshold formulae

Jeřabek showed in 2008 that cuts in propositional-logic deepinference proofs can be eliminated in quasipolynomial time. The proof is an indirect one relying on a result of Atserias, Galesi and Pudlak about monotone sequent calculus and a correspondence between this system and cut-free deep-inference proofs. In this paper we give a direct proof of Jeřabeks result: we give a quasipolynomial-time cut-elimination procedure in propositional-logic deep inference. The main new ingredient is the use of a computational trace of deep-inference proofs called atomic flows, which are both very simple (they trace only structural rules and forget logical rules) and strong enough to faithfully represent the cutelimination procedure.

QUASIPOLYNOMIAL NORMALISATION IN DEEP INFERENCE VIA ATOMIC FLOWS AND THRESHOLD FORMULAE

Jerabek showed that analytic propositional-logic deep-inference proofs can be constructed in quasipolynomial time from nonanalytic proofs. In this work, we improve on that as follows: 1) we significantly simplify the technique; 2) our normalisation procedure is direct, i.e., it is internal to deep inference. The paper is self-contained, and provides a starting point and a good deal of information for tackling the problem of whether a polynomial-time normalisation procedure exists.

A Logical Basis for Quantum Evolution and Entanglement

We reconsider discrete quantum causal dynamics where quantum systems are viewed as discrete structures, namely directed acyclic graphs. In such a graph, events are considered as vertices and edges depict propagation between events. Evolution is described as happening between a special family of spacelike slices, which were referred to as locative slices. Such slices are not so large as to result in acausal influences, but large enough to capture nonlocal correlations.

A Tutorial on Proof Theoretic Foundations of Logic Programming

Abstract logic programming is about designing logic programming languages via the proof theoretic notion of uniform provability. It allows the design of purely logical, very expressive logic programming languages, endowed with a rich meta theory. This tutorial intends to expose the main ideas of this discipline in the most direct and simple way.