Corina Cîrstea

Modal Logics are Coalgebraic1

Applications of modal logics are abundant in computer science, and a large number of structurally different modal logics have been successfully employed in a diverse spectrum of application contexts. Coalgebraic semantics, on the other hand, provides a uniform and encompassing view on the large variety of specific logics used in particular domains. The coalgebraic approach is generic and compositional: tools and techniques simultaneously apply to a large class of application areas and can, moreover, be combined in a modular way. In particular, this facilitates a pick-and-choose approach to domain-specific formalisms, applicable across the entire scope of application areas, leading to generic software tools that are easier to design, to implement and to maintain. This paper substantiates the authors’ firm belief that the systematic exploitation of the coalgebraic nature of modal logic will not only have impact on the field of modal logic itself but also lead to significant progress in a number of areas within computer science, such as knowledge representation and concurrency/mobility.

Modular Construction of Modal Logics

We present a modular approach to defining logics for a wide variety of state-based systems. We use coalgebras to model the behaviour of systems, and modal logics to specify behavioural properties of systems. We show that the syntax, semantics and proof systems associated to such logics can all be derived in a modular way. Moreover, we show that the logics thus obtained inherit soundness, completeness and expressiveness properties from their building blocks. We apply these techniques to derive sound, complete and expressive logics for a wide variety of probabilistic systems.

EXPTIME tableaux for the coalgebraic µ-calculus

The coalgebraic approach to modal logic provides a uniform framework that captures the semantics of a large class of structurally different modal logics, including e.g. graded and probabilistic modal logics and coalition logic. In this paper, we introduce the coalgebraic µ-calculus, an extension of the general (coalgebraic) framework with fixpoint operators. Our main results are completeness of the associated tableau calculus and EXPTIME decidability. Technically, this is achieved by reducing satisfiability to the existence of non-wellfounded tableaux, which is in turn equivalent to the existence of winning strategies in parity games. Our results are parametric in the underlying class of models and yield, as concrete applications, previously unknown complexity bounds for the probabilistic µ-calculus and for an extension of coalition logic with fixpoints.

Coalgebra semantics for hidden algebra: Parameterised objects an inheritance

The theory of hidden algebras combines standard algebraic techniques with coalgebraic techniques to provide a semantic foundation for the object paradigm. This paper focuses on the coalgebraic aspect of hidden algebra, concerned with signatures of destructors at the syntactic level and with finality and cofree constructions at the semantic level. Our main result shows the existence of cofree constructions induced by maps between coalgebraic hidden specifications. Their use in giving a semantics to parameterised objects and inheritance is then illustrated. The cofreeness result for hidden algebra is generalised to abstract coalgebra and a universal construction for building object systems over existing subsystems is obtained. Finally, existence of final/cofree constructions for arbitrary hidden specifications is discussed.

A compositional approach to defining logics for coalgebras

We present a compositional approach to defining expressive logics for coalgebras of endofunctors on Set. This approach uses a notion of language constructor and an associated notion of semantics to capture one inductive step in the definition of a language for coalgebras and of its semantics. We show that suitable choices for the language constructors and for their associated semantics yield logics which are both adequate and expressive w.r.t, behavioural equivalence. Moreover, we show that type-building operations give rise to corresponding operations both on language constructors and on their associated semantics, thus allowing the derivation of expressive logics for increasingly complex coalgebraic types. Our framework subsumes several existing approaches to defining logics for coalgebras, and at the same time allows the derivation of new logics, with logics for probabilistic systems being the prime example.

Institutionalising Many-Sorted Coalgebraic Modal Logic

Abstract [4] describes a modal logic for coalgebras of certain polynomial endofunctors on Set . This logic is here generalised to endofunctors on categories of sorted sets. The structure of the endofunctors considered is then exploited in order to define ways of moving from (coalgebras of) one endofunctor to (coalgebras of) another, and to equip them with translations between the associated modal languages. Furthermore, the resulting translations are shown to preserve and reflect the satisfaction of modal formulae by coalgebras.

An institution of modal logics for coalgebras

This paper presents a modular framework for the specification of certain inductively-defined coalgebraic types. Modal logics for coalgebras of polynomial endofunctors on the category of sets have been studied in [M. Rößiger, Coalgebras and modal logic, in: H. Reichel (Ed.), Coalgebraic Methods in Computer Science, Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, vol. 33, Elsevier Science, 2000, pp. 299–320; B. Jacobs, Many-sorted coalgebraic modal logic: a model-theoretic study, Theoretical Informatics and Applications 35(1) (2001) 31–59]. These logics are here generalised to endofunctors on categories of sorted sets, in order to allow collections of inter-related types to be specified simultaneously. The inductive nature of the coalgebraic types considered is then used to formalise semantic relationships between different types, and to define translations between the associated logics. The resulting logical framework is shown to be an institution, whose specifications and specification morphisms admit final and respectively cofree models.

A modular approach to defining and characterising notions of simulation

We propose a modular approach to defining notions of simulation, and modal logics which characterise them. We use coalgebras to model state-based systems, relators to define notions of simulation for such systems, and inductive techniques to define the syntax and semantics of modal logics for coalgebras. We show that the expressiveness of an inductively defined logic for coalgebras w.r.t. a notion of simulation follows from an expressivity condition involving one step in the definition of the logic, and the relator inducing that notion of simulation. Moreover, we show that notions of simulation and associated characterising logics for increasingly complex system types can be derived by lifting the operations used to combine system types, to a relational level as well as to a logical level. We use these results to obtain Baltags logic for coalgebraic simulation, as well as notions of simulation and associated logics for a large class of non-deterministic and probabilistic systems.

On expressivity and compositionality in logics for coalgebras

This paper attempts to unify some of the existing approaches to defining modal logics for coalgebras, from the point of view of constructing the languages employed by these logics. An abstract framework for defining languages for coalgebras from so-called language constructors, corresponding to one-step unfoldings of the coalgebraic structure, is introduced, and a method for deriving expressive languages for coalgebras from suitable choices for the language constructors is described. Moreover, it is shown that the derivation of such languages by means of language constructors is well-behaved w.r.t. various forms of composition between coalgebraic types.

A coalgebraic approach to linear-time logics

We extend recent work on defining linear-time behaviour for state-based systems with branching, and propose modal and fixpoint logics for specifying linear-time temporal properties of states in such systems. We model systems with branching as coalgebras whose type arises as the composition of a branching monad and a polynomial endofunctor on the category of sets, and employ a set of truth values induced canonically by the branching monad. This yields logics for reasoning about quantitative aspects of linear-time behaviour. Examples include reasoning about the probability of a linear-time behaviour being exhibited by a system with probabilistic branching, or about the minimal cost of a linear-time behaviour being exhibited by a system with weighted branching. In the case of non-deterministic branching, our logic supports reasoning about the possibility of exhibiting a given linear-time behaviour, and therefore resembles an existential version of the logic LTL.