This paper has the purpose of reviewing some of the established relationships between logic and concurrency, and of exploring new ones. Concurrent and distributed systems are notoriously hard to get right. Therefore, following an approach that has proved highly beneficial for sequential programs, much effort has been invested in tracing the foundations of concurrency in logic. The starting points of such investigations have been various idealized languages of concurrent and distributed programming, in particular the well-established state-transformation model inspired to Petri nets and multiset rewriting, and the prolific process-based models such as the π-calculus and other process algebras. In nearly all cases, the target of these investigations has been linear logic, a formal language that supports a view of formulas as consumable resources. In the first part of this paper, we review some of these interpretations of concurrent languages into linear logic. In the second part of the paper, we propose a completely new approach to understanding concurrent and distributed programming as a manifestation of logic, which yields a language that merges those two main paradigms of concurrency. Specifically, we present a new semantics for multiset rewriting founded on an alternative view of linear logic. The resulting interpretation is extended with a majority of linear connectives into the language of ω-multisets. This interpretation drops the distinction between multiset elements and rewrite rules, and considerably enriches the expressive power of standard multiset rewriting with embedded rules, choice, replication, and more. Derivations are now primarily viewed as open objects, and are closed only to examine intermediate rewriting states. The resulting language can also be interpreted as a process algebra. For example, a simple translation maps process constructors of the asynchronous π-calculus to rewrite operators, while the structural equivalence corresponds directly to logically-motivated structural properties of ω-multisets (with one exception).

We present a revisited semantics for multiset rewriting founded on the left sequent rules of linear logic in its LV presentation. The resulting interpretation is extended with a majority of linear connectives into the language of #- multisets. It drops the distinction between multiset elements and rewrite rules, and considerably enriches the expressive power of standard multiset rewriting with embedded rules, choice, replication and more. The cut rules introduce finite auxiliary rewriting chains and are admissible. Derivations are now primarily viewed as open objects, and are closed only to examine intermediate rewriting states. The resulting language can also be interpreted as a process algebra. A simple translation maps process constructors of the asynchronous #-calculus to rewrite operators, while the structural equivalence corresponds directly to logically-motivated structural properties of #-multisets (with one exception). The language of #-multisets forms the basis for the security protocol specification language MSR 3. With relations to both multiset rewriting and process algebra, it supports specifications that are process-based, state-based, or of a mixed nature. Additionally, its deep logical underpinning makes it an ideal common ground for systematically comparing protocol specification languages, a task currently done in an ad-hoc manner.

Logic programming can be given a foundation in sequent calculus by viewing computation as the process of building a cut-free sequent proof bottom-up. The first accounts of logic programming as proof search were given in classical and intuitionistic logic. Given that linear logic allows richer sequents and richer dynamics in the rewriting of sequents during proof search, it was inevitable that linear logic would be used to design new and more expressive logic programming languages. We overview how linear logic has been used to design such new languages and describe briefly some applications and implementation issues for them.

dale.miller [at] inria.fr