In this dissertation we investigate presheaf models for concurrent computation. Our aim is to provide a systematic treatment of bisimulation for a wide range of concurrent process calculi. Bisimilarity is defined abstractly in terms of open maps as in the work of Joyal, Nielsen and Winskel. Their work inspired this thesis by suggesting that presheaf categories could provide abstract models for concurrency with a built-in notion of bisimulation. We show how

Marcelo Fiore , Glynn Winskel (1) BRICS , University of Aarhus, Denmark (2) LFCS, University of Edinburgh, Scotland December 1997 Abstract We develop a 2-categorical theory for recursively defined domains.

We give an axiomatic category theoretic account of bisimulation in process algebras based on the idea of functional bisimulations as open maps. We work with 2-monads, T , on Cat. Operations on processes, such as nondeterministic sum, prefixing and parallel composition are modelled using functors in the Kleisli category for the 2-monad T .

We recast dataflow in a modern categorical light using profunctors as a generalization of relations. The well known causal anomalies associated with relational semantics of indeterminate dataflow are avoided, but still we preserve much of the intuitions of a relational model. The development fits with the view of categories of models for concurrency and the general treatment of bisimulation they provide. In particular it fits with the recent categorical formulation of feedback using traced monoidal categories. The payoffs are: (1) explicit relations to existing models and semantics, especially the usual axioms of monotone IO automata are read off from the definition of profunctors, (2) a new definition of bisimulation for dataflow, the proof of the congruence of which benefits from the preservation properties associated with open maps and (3) a treatment of higher-order dataflow as a biproduct, essentially by following the geometry of interaction programme.

Recent work has shown that presheaf categories provide a general model of concurrency, with an inbuilt notion of bisimulation based on open maps. Here it is shown how this approach can also handle systems where the language of actions may change dynamically as a process evolves. The example is the pi-calculus, a calculus for `mobile processes' whose communication topology varies as channels are created and discarded. A denotational semantics is described for the pi-calculus within an indexed category of profunctors; the model is fully abstract for bisimilarity, in the sense that bisimulation in the model, obtained from open maps, coincides with the usual bisimulation obtained from the operational semantics of the pi-calculus. While attention is concentrated on the `late' semantics of the pi-calculus, it is indicated how the `early' and other variants can also be captured.

A metalanguage for concurrent process languages is introduced.

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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 break-down 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.

In this paper we present a modal logic for describing properties of terms in the object calculus of Abadi and Cardelli [AC96]. The logic is essentially the modal mu-calculus of [Koz83]. The fragment allows us to express the temporal modalities of the logic CTL [BAMP83]. We investigate the connection between the type system Ob 1!: and the mu-calculus, providing a translation of types into modal formulae and an ordering on formulae that is sound w.r.t. to the subtype ordering of Ob 1!: .

This thesis is concerned with formal semantics and models for concurrent computational systems, that is, systems consisting of a number of parallel computing sequential systems, interacting with each other and the environment. A formal semantics gives meaning to computational systems by describing their behaviour in a mathematical model. For concurrent systems the interesting aspect of their computation is often how they interact with the environment during a computation and not in which state they terminate, indeed they may not be intended to terminate at all. For this reason they are often referred to as reactive systems, to distinguish them from traditional calculational systems, as e.g. a program calculating your income tax, for which the interesting behaviour is the answer it gives when (or if) it terminates, in other words the (possibly partial) function it computes between input and output. Church's thesis tells us that regardless of whether we choose the lambda calculus, Turing machines, or almost any modern programming language such as C or Java to describe calculational systems, we are able to describe exactly the same class of functions. However, there is no agreement on observable behaviour for concurrent reactive systems, and consequently there is no correspondent to Church's thesis. A result of this fact is that an overwhelming number of di#erent and often competing notions of observable behaviours, primitive operations, languages and mathematical models for describing their semantics, have been proposed in the litterature on concurrency.