The theme of this paper is profunctors, and their centrality and ubiquity in understanding concurrent computation. Profunctors (a.k.a. distributors, or bimodules) are a generalisation of relations to categories. Here they are first presented and motivated via spans of event structures, and the semantics of nondeterministic dataflow. Profunctors are shown to play a key role in relating models for concurrency and to support an interpretation as higher-order processes (where input and output may be processes). Two recent directions of research are described. One is concerned with a language and computational interpretation for profunctors. This addresses the duality between input and output in profunctors. The other is to investigate general spans of event structures (the spans can be viewed as special profunctors) to give causal semantics to higher-order processes. For this it is useful to generalise event structures to allow events which “persist.”

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Nondeterminism is modelled in domain theory by the notion of a powerdomain, while probability is modelled by that of the probabilistic powerdomain. Some problems arise when we want to combine them in order to model computation in which both nondeterminism and probability are present. In particular there is no categorical distributive law between them. We introduce the powerdomain of indexed valuations which modifies the usual probabilistic powerdomain to take more detailed account of where probabilistic choices are made. We show the existence of a distributive law between the powerdomain of indexed valuations and the nondeterministic powerdomain. By means of an equational theory we give an alternative characterisation of indexed valuations and the distributive law. We study the relation between valuations and indexed valuations. Finally we use indexed valuations to give a semantics to a programming language. This semantics reveals the computational intuition lying behind the mathematics. In the second part of the thesis we provide an operational reading of continuous valuations on certain domains (the distributive concrete domains of Kahn and Plotkin) through the model of probabilistic event structures. Event structures are a model for concurrent computation that account for causal relations between events. We propose a way of adding probabilities to confusion free event structures, defining the notion of probabilistic event structure. This leads to various ideas of a run for probabilistic event structures. We show a confluence theorem for such runs. Configurations of a confusion free event structure form a distributive concrete domain. We give a representation theorem which characterises completely the powerdomain of valuations of such concrete domains in terms of prob...

The article discusses causal models, such as Petri nets and event structures, how they have been rediscovered in a wide variety of recent applications, and why they are fundamental to computer science. A discussion of their present limitations leads to their extension with symmetry. The consequences, actual and potential, are discussed.

Increasingly, the style of computation is changing. Instead of one machine running a program sequentially, we have systems with many individual agents running in parallel. The need for mathematical models of such computations is therefore ever greater. There are many models of concurrent computations. Such models can, for example, provide a semantics to process calculi and thereby suggest behavioural equivalences between processes. They are also key to the development of automated tools for reasoning about concurrent systems. In this thesis we explore some applications and generalisations of one particular model – event structures. We describe a variety of kinds of morphism between event structures. Each kind expresses a different sort of behavioural relationship. We demonstrate the way in which event structures can model both processes and types of processes by recalling a semantics for Affine HOPLA, a higher order process language. This is given in terms of asymmetric spans of event structures. We show that such spans support a trace construction. This allows the modelling of feedback and suggests a semantics for non-deterministic dataflow processes in terms of spans. The semantics given is shown to be consistent with Kahn’s fixed point construction when we consider spans modelling deterministic processes. A generalisation of event structures to include persistent events is proposed. Based on previously described morphisms between classical event structures, we define several categories of event structures with persistence. We show that, unlike for the corresponding categories of classical event structures, all are isomorphic to Kleisli categories of monads

Abstract. We introduce a novel way to integrate functional and concurrent programming based on intuitionistic linear logic. The functional core arises from interpreting proof reduction as computation. The concurrent core arises from interpreting proof search as computation. The two are tightly integrated via a monad that permits both sides to share the same logical meaning for the linear connectives while preserving their different computational paradigms. For example, concurrent computation synthesizes proofs which can be evaluated as functional programs. We illustrate our design with some small examples, including an encoding of the pi-calculus. 1

This paper introduces new-HOPLA, a concise but powerful language for higher-order nondeterministic processes with name generation. Its origins as a metalanguage for domain theory are sketched but for the most part the paper concentrates on its operational semantics.

A category of event structures with symmetry is introduced and its categorical properties investigated. Applications to the event-structure semantics of higher order processes, nondeterministic dataflow and the unfolding of Petri nets with multiple tokens are sketched.