Gian Luca Cattani

Presheaf Models for Concurrency

This paper studies presheaf models for concurrent computation. An aim is to harness the general machinery around presheaves for the purposes of process calculi. Traditional models like synchronisation trees and event structures have been shown to embed fully and faithfully in particular presheaf models in such a way that bisimulation, expressed through the presence of a span of open maps, is conserved. As is shown in the work of Joyal and Moerdijk, presheaves are rich in constructions which preserve open maps, and so bisimulation, by arguments of a very general nature. This paper contributes similar results but biased towards questions of bisimulation in process calculi. It is concerned with modelling process constructions on presheaves, showing these preserve open maps, and with transferring such results to traditional models for processes. One new result here is that a wide range of left Kan extensions, between categories of presheaves, preserve open maps. As a corollary, this also implies that any colimit-preserving functor between presheaf categories preserves open maps. A particular left Kan extension is shown to coincide with a refinement operation on event structures. A broad class of presheaf models is proposed for a general process calculus. General arguments are given for why the operations of a presheaf model preserve open maps and why for specific presheaf models the operations coincide with those of traditional models.

Higher dimensional transition systems

We introduce the notion of higher dimensional transition systems as a model of concurrency providing an elementary, set-theoretic formalisation of the idea of higher dimensional transition. We show an embedding of the category of higher dimensional transition systems into that of higher dimensional automata which cuts down to an equivalence when we restrict to non-degenerate automata. Moreover, we prove that the natural notion of bisimulation for such structures is a generalisation of the strong history preserving bisimulation, and provide an abstract categorical account of it via open maps. Finally, we define a notion of unfolding for higher dimensional transition systems and characterise the structures so obtained as a generalisation of event structures.

Profunctors, open maps and bisimulation

This paper studies fundamental connections between profunctors (that is, distributors, or bimodules), open maps and bisimulation. In particular, it proves that a colimit preserving functor between presheaf categories (corresponding to a profunctor) preserves open maps and open map bisimulation. Consequently, the composition of profunctors preserves open maps as 2-cells. A guiding idea is the view that profunctors, and colimit preserving functors, are linear maps in a model of classical linear logic. But profunctors, and colimit preserving functors, as linear maps, are too restrictive for many applications. This leads to a study of a range of pseudo-comonads and of how non-linear maps in their co-Kleisli bicategories preserve open maps and bisimulation. The pseudo-comonads considered are based on finite colimit completion, ‘lifting’, and indexed families. The paper includes an appendix summarising the key results on coends, left Kan extensions and the preservation of colimits. One motivation for this work is that it provides a mathematical framework for extending domain theory and denotational semantics of programming languages to the more intricate models, languages and equivalences found in concurrent computation, but the results are likely to have more general applicability because of the ubiquitous nature of profunctors.

A theory of recursive domains with applications to concurrency

We develop a 2-categorical theory for recursively defined domains. In particular we generalise the traditional approach based on order-theoretic structures to category-theoretic ones. A motivation for this development is the need of a domain theory for concurrency, with an account of bisimulation. Indeed, the leading examples throughout the paper are provided by recursively defined presheaf models for concurrent process calculi. Further we use the framework to study (open-map) bisimulation.

Presheaf models for CCS-like languages

The aim of this paper is to harness the mathematical machinery around presheaves for the purposes of process calculi. Joyal, Nielsen and Winskel proposed a general definition of bisimulation from open maps. Here we show that open-map bisimulations within a range of presheaf models are congruences for a general process language, in which CCS and related languages are easily encoded. The results are then transferred to traditional models for processes. By first establishing the congruence results for presheaf models, abstract, general proofs of congruence properties can be provided and the awkwardness caused through traditional models not always possessing the cartesian liftings, used in the breakdown of process operations, are side stepped. The abstract results are applied to show that hereditary history-preserving bisimulation is a congruence for CCS-like languages to which is added a refinement operator on event structures as proposed by van Glabbeek and Goltz.

The Bicategory-Theoretic Solution of Recursive Domain Equations

We generalise the traditional approach of Smyth and Plotkin to the solution of recursive domain equations from order-enriched structures to bicategorical ones and thereby develop a bicategorical theory for recursively defined domains in accordance with Axiomatic Domain Theory.