There have been quite a few proposals for behavioural equivalences for concurrent processes, and many of them are presented in Van Glabbeek’s linear timebranching time spectrum. Since their original definitions are based on rather different ideas, proving general properties of them all would seem to require a case-bycase study. However, the use of their axiomatizations allows a uniform treatment that might produce general proofs of those properties. Recently Aceto, Fokkink and Ingólfsdóttir have presented a very interesting result: For any process preorder coarser than the ready simulation in the linear time-branching time spectrum they show how to get an axiomatization of the induced equivalence. Unfortunately, their proof is not uniform and requires a case-by-case analysis. Following the alternative approach suggested above, in this paper we present a much simpler (and algebraic) proof of that result which, in addition, is more general and totally uniform, so that it does not need to consider one by one the different semantics in the spectrum.

Abstract. This paper presents a general technique for obtaining new results pertaining to the non-finite axiomatizability of behavioural (pre)congruences over process algebras from old ones. The proposed technique is based on a variation on the classic idea of reduction mappings. In this setting, such reductions are translations between languages that preserve sound (in)equations and (in)equational proofs over the source language, and reflect families of (in)equations responsible for the non-finite axiomatizability of the target language. The proposed technique is applied to obtain a number of new non-finite axiomatizability theorems in process algebra via reduction to Moller’s celebrated non-finite axiomatizability result for CCS. The limitations of the reduction technique are also studied. In particular, it is shown that prebisimilarity is not finitely based over CCS with the divergent process Ω, but that this result cannot be proved by a reduction to the non-finite axiomatizability of CCS modulo bisimilarity. 1

Covariant-contravariant simulation and conformance simulation generalize plain simulation and try to capture the fact that it is not always the case that ”the larger the number of behaviors, the better”. We have previously studied their logical characterizations and in this paper we present the axiomatizations of the preorders defined by the new simulation relations and their induced equivalences. The interest of our results lies in the fact that the axiomatizations help us to know the new simulations better, understanding in particular the role of the contravariant characteristics and their interplay with the covariant ones; moreover, the axiomatizations provide us with a powerful tool to (algebraically) prove results of the corresponding semantics. But we also consider our results interesting from a metatheoretical point of view: the fact that the covariant-contravariant simulation equivalence is indeed ground axiomatizable when there is no action that exhibits both a covariant and a contravariant behaviour, but becomes non-axiomatizable whenever we have together actions of that kind and either covariant or contravariant actions, offers us a new subtle example of the narrow border separating axiomatizable and non-axiomatizable semantics. We expect that by studying these examples we will be able to develop a general theory separating axiomatizable and non-axiomatizable semantics. 1 Introduction and some related work

Abstract. Covariant-contravariant simulation and conformance simulation generalize plain simulation and try to capture the fact that it is not always the case that “the larger the number of behaviors, the better”. We have previously studied their logical characterizations and in this paper we continue with their study, presenting them as instantiations of the general categorical results on simulation logics by Cîrstea. In addition, we also follow the algebraic approach and introduce the axiomatizations of the preorders defined by the new simulation relations and their induced equivalences. 1 Introduction and some related work Simulations are a very natural way to compare systems defined by labeled transition systems or other related mechanisms based on describing the behavior of states by means of the actions they can execute [17]. They aim at comparing processes based on the simple premise “you are better if you can do as much as me, and perhaps some

On the unification of process semantics: equational semantics