Yao et al. (A note on the feasibility of generalized universal composability. Theory and Applications of Models of Computation pp. 474–485, 2007; A note on the feasibility of generalised universal composability. Mathematical Structures in Computer Science, 19 (1), pp. 193–205) claimed a potential limitation on the class of protocols that could be securely implemented in the generalized universal composability (GUC) framework proposed by Canetti et al. (Universally composable security with global setup. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 61–85, 2007). Specifically, Yao et al. presented a concrete attack on a GUC Zero Knowledge (GUCZK) protocol, a natural adaptation Blum's ZK proof for Directed Hamiltonicity using the general GUC feasibility of Canetti et al. (Universally composable security with global setup. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp. 61–85, 2007). Interestingly, the attack was not analysed in the GUC model in Yao et al. (A note on the feasibility of generalised universal composability. Mathematical Structures in Computer Science19 (1), pp. 193–205, 2009) but in the FUC model, a new UC-like framework proposed in the same work. Nonetheless, Yao et al. (A note on the feasibility of generalised universal composability. Mathematical Structures in Computer Science19 (1), pp. 193–205, 2009) argued that, in light of this attack, GUC would lose its concurrent general composability and proof of knowledge properties. Concretely, they argue that GUC composability would now be with respect to some adversaries with limited access to external arbitrary protocols.

In this work, we show that the claimed attack from Yao et al. is indeed harmless and does not contradict the security of the mentioned GUCZK protocol, thus restoring the general feasibility for GUC.

A quantum algorithm to determine approximations of linear structures of Boolean functions is presented and analysed. Similar results have already been published (see Simon's algorithm) but only for some promise versions of the problem, and it has been shown that no exponential quantum speedup can be obtained for the general (no promise) version of the problem. In this paper, no additional promise assumptions are made. The approach presented is based on the method used in the Bernstein–Vazirani algorithm to identify linear Boolean functions and on ideas from Simon's period finding algorithm. A proper combination of these two approaches results here to a polynomial-time approximation to the linear structures set. Specifically, we show how the accuracy of the approximation with high probability changes according to the running time of the algorithm. Moreover, we show that the time required for the linear structure determine problem with high success probability is related to so called relative differential uniformity δf of a Boolean function f. Smaller differential uniformity is, shorter time is needed.

In this paper, we describe a denotational model of Intuitionist Linear Logic which is also a differential category. Formulas are interpreted as Mackey-complete topological vector space and linear proofs are interpreted as bounded linear functions. So as to interpret non-linear proofs of Linear Logic, we use a notion of power series between Mackey-complete spaces, generalizing entire functions in $\mathbb{C}$ . Finally, we get a quantitative model of Intuitionist Differential Linear Logic, with usual syntactic differentiation and where interpretations of proofs decompose as a Taylor expansion.

Rewriting techniques constitute a foundational theory of computing science. They are being investigated for several structures, such as lambda-terms, strings, first-order terms or graphs, and have been successfully used in many areas such as programming languages, automated reasoning, program verification, security, etc. The growing interest in this research area is witnessed by the leading international events, such as ICGT (International Conference on Graph Transformation) and the recent FSCD conference (International Conference on Formal Structures for Computation and Deduction), which gathers all topics of the former international conferences RTA (Rewriting Techniques and Applications) and TLCA (Typed Lambda Calculi and Applications). During the last decade, a particular interest has been devoted to the study of the impact of shared structures in term and graph rewriting through the international workshops editions of TERMGRAPH and GCM (Graph Computation Models).

This special issue of Mathematical Structures in Computer Science is dedicated to the memory of Barry Cooper (October 9, 1943–October 26, 2015). Barry's life in research had a huge impact on the development of the world of computability. Aside from his enormous achievements in classical computability theory, he contributed immensely to the promotion of interdisciplinary developments related to computability, in particular, by founding the Association for Computability in Europe (CiE) and its annual, highly successful conference series.

Any refinement system (= functor) has a fully faithful representation in the refinement system of presheaves, by interpreting types as relative slice categories, and refinement types as presheaves over those categories. Motivated by an analogy between side effects in programming and context effects in linear logic, we study logical aspects of this ‘positive’ (covariant) representation, as well as of an associated ‘negative’ (contravariant) representation. We establish several preservation properties for these representations, including a generalization of Day's embedding theorem for monoidal closed categories. Then, we establish that the positive and negative representations satisfy an Isbell-style duality. As corollaries, we derive two different formulas for the positive representation of a pushforward (inspired by the classical negative translations of proof theory), which express it either as the dual of a pullback of a dual or as the double dual of a pushforward. Besides explaining how these constructions on refinement systems generalize familiar category-theoretic ones (by viewing categories as special refinement systems), our main running examples involve representations of Hoare logic and linear sequent calculus.

This special issue is devoted to some aspects of the new ideas that recently arose from the work of Thomas Ehrhard on the models of linear logic (LL) and of the λ-calculus. In some sense, the very origin of these ideas dates back to the introduction of LL in the 80s by Jean-Yves Girard. An obvious remark is that LL yielded a first logical quantitative account of the use of resources: the logical distinction between linear and non-linear formulas through the introduction of the exponential connectives. As explicitly mentioned by Girard in his first paper on the subject, the quantitative approach, to which he refers as ‘quantitative semantics,’ had a crucial influence on the birth of LL. And even though, at that time, it was given up for lack of ‘any logical justification’ (quoting the author), it contained rough versions of many concepts that were better understood, precisely introduced and developed much later, like differentiation and Taylor expansion for proofs. Around 2003, and thanks to the developments of LL and of the whole research area between logic and theoretical computer science, Ehrhard could come back to these fundamental intuitions and introduce the structure of finiteness space, allowing to reformulate this quantitative approach in a standard algebraic setting. The interpretation of LL in the category Fin of finiteness spaces and finitary relations suggested to Ehrhard and Regnier the differential extensions of LL and of the simply typed λ-calculus: Differential Linear Logic (DiLL) and the differential λ-calculus. The theory of LL proof-nets could be straightforwardly extended to DiLL, and a very natural notion of Taylor expansion of a proof-net (and of a λ-term) was introduced: an element of the Taylor expansion of the proof-net/term α is itself a (differential) proof-net/term and an approximation of α.

We present Geometry of Interaction (GoI) models for Multiplicative Polarized Linear Logic, MLLP, which is the multiplicative fragment of Olivier Laurent's Polarized Linear Logic. This is done by uniformly adding multi-points to various categorical models of GoI. Multi-points are shown to play an essential role in semantically characterizing the dynamics of proof networks in polarized proof theory. For example, they permit us to characterize the key feature of polarization, focusing, as well as being fundamental to our construction of concrete polarized GoI models.

Our approach to polarized GoI involves following two independent studies, based on different categorical perspectives of GoI:

1. (i) Inspired by the work of Abramsky, Haghverdi and Scott, a polarized GoI situation is defined in which multi-points are added to a traced monoidal category equipped with a reflexive object U. Using this framework, categorical versions of Girard's execution formula are defined, as well as the GoI interpretation of MLLP proofs. Running the execution formula is shown to characterize the focusing property (and thus polarities) as well as the dynamics of cut elimination.

2. (ii) The Int construction of Joyal–Street–Verity is another fundamental categorical structure for modelling GoI. Here, we investigate it in a multi-pointed setting. Our presentation yields a compact version of Hamano–Scott's polarized categories, and thus denotational models of MLLP. These arise from a contravariant duality between monoidal categories of positive and negative objects, along with an appropriate bimodule structure (representing ‘non-focused proofs’) between them.

Finally, as a special case of (ii) above, a compact model of MLLP is also presented based on Rel (the category of sets and relations) equipped with multi-points.

This special issue collects selected articles from the Third International Workshop on Linearity (LINEARITY 2014), which was held in Vienna, on July 13th, 2014. The workshop was a one-day satellite event of FLoC 2014, the sixth Federated Logic Conference, which was held as part of the 2014 Vienna Summer of Logic.

Logical frameworks and meta-languages form a common substrate for representing, implementing and reasoning about a wide variety of deductive systems of interest in logic and computer science. Their design and implementation and their use in reasoning tasks ranging from the correctness of software to the properties of formal computational systems have been the focus of considerable research over the last two decades.

A semigroup-based setting for developing Hoare logics and refinement calculi is introduced together with procedures for translating between verification and refinement proofs. A new Hoare logic for multirelations and two minimalist generic verification and refinement components, implemented in an interactive theorem prover, are presented as applications that benefit from this generalisation.

Craig Squier proved that, if a monoid can be presented by a finite convergent string rewriting system, then it satisfies the homological finiteness condition left-FP3. Using this result, he constructed finitely presentable monoids with a decidable word problem, but that cannot be presented by finite convergent rewriting systems. Later, he introduced the condition of finite derivation type, which is a homotopical finiteness property on the presentation complex associated to a monoid presentation. He showed that this condition is an invariant of finite presentations and he gave a constructive way to prove this finiteness property based on the computation of the critical branchings: Being of finite derivation type is a necessary condition for a finitely presented monoid to admit a finite convergent presentation. This survey presents Squier's results in the contemporary language of polygraphs and higher dimensional categories, with new proofs and relations between them.

In this article, we generalize Courcelle's recognizable graph languages and results on monadic second-order logic to more general structures.

First, we give a category-theoretical characterization of recognizability. A recognizable subset of arrows in a category is defined via a functor into the category of relations on finite sets. This can be seen as a straightforward generalization of finite automata. We show that our notion corresponds to recognizable graph languages if we apply the theory to the category of cospans of graphs.

In the second part of the paper, we introduce a simple logic that allows to quantify over the subobjects of a categorical object. Again, we show that, for the category of graphs, this logic is equally expressive as monadic second-order graph logic (msogl). Furthermore, we show that in the more general setting of hereditary pushout categories, a class of categories closely related to adhesive categories, we can recover Courcelle's result that every msogl-expressible property is recognizable. This is done by giving an inductive translation of formulas of our logic into automaton functors.

It is well-known that cellular automata can be characterized as the set of translation-invariant continuous functions over a compact metric space; this point of view makes it easy to extend their definition from grids to Cayley graphs. Cayley graphs have a number of useful features: the ability to graphically represent finitely generated group elements and their relations; to name all vertices relative to an origin; and the fact that they have a well-defined notion of translation. We propose a notion of graphs, which preserves or generalizes these features. Whereas Cayley graphs are very regular, generalized Cayley graphs are arbitrary, although of a bounded degree. We extend cellular automata theory to these arbitrary, bounded degree, time-varying graphs. The obtained notion of cellular automata is stable under composition and under inversion.

The paper defines and studies the genus of finite state deterministic automata (FSA) and regular languages. Indeed, an FSA can be seen as a graph for which the notion of genus arises. At the same time, an FSA has a semantics via its underlying language. It is then natural to make a connection between the languages and the notion of genus. After we introduce and justify the the notion of the genus for regular languages, the following questions are addressed. First, depending on the size of the alphabet, we provide upper and lower bounds on the genus of regular languages: we show that under a relatively generic condition on the alphabet and the geometry of the automata, the genus grows at least linearly in terms of the size of the automata. Second, we show that the topological cost of the powerset determinization procedure is exponential. Third, we prove that the notion of minimization is orthogonal to the notion of genus. Fourth, we build regular languages of arbitrary large genus: the notion of genus defines a proper hierarchy of regular languages.

A variety of logical frameworks supports the use of higher order abstract syntax in representing formal systems. Although these systems seem superficially the same, they differ in a variety of ways, for example, how they handle a context of assumptions and which theorems about a given formal system can be concisely expressed and proved. Our contributions in this paper are two-fold: (1) We develop a common infrastructure and language for describing benchmarks for systems supporting reasoning with binders, and (2) we present several concrete benchmarks, which highlight a variety of different aspects of reasoning within a context of assumptions. Our work provides the background for the qualitative comparison of different systems that we have completed in a separate paper. It also allows us to outline future fundamental research questions regarding the design and implementation of meta-reasoning systems.

The study of algebraic modelling of labelled non-deterministic concurrent processes leads us to consider a category LB, obtained from a complete meet-semilattice B and from B-valued equivalence relations. We prove that, if B has enough properties, then LB presents a two-fold internal logical structure, induced by two doctrines definable on it: one related to its families of subobjects and one to its families of regular subobjects. The first doctrine is Heyting and makes LB a Heyting category, the second one is Boolean. We will see that the difference between these two logical structures, namely the different behaviour of the negation operator, can be interpreted in terms of a distinction between non-deterministic and deterministic behaviours of agents able to perform computations in the context of the same process. Moreover, the sorted first-order logic naturally associated with LB can be extended to a modal/temporal logic, again using the doctrinal setting. Relations are also drawn to other computational models.

Models of dependent type theories are contextual categories with some additional structure. We prove that if a theory T has enough structure, then the category T-Mod of its models carries the structure of a model category. We also show that if T has Σ-types, then weak equivalences can be characterized in terms of homotopy categories of models.

Differential linear logic enriches linear logic with additional logical rules for the exponential connectives, dual to the usual rules of dereliction, weakening and contraction. We present a proof-net syntax for differential linear logic and a categorical axiomatization of its denotational models. We also introduce a simple categorical condition on these models under which a general antiderivative operation becomes available. Last, we briefly describe the model of sets and relations and give a more detailed account of the model of finiteness spaces and linear and continuous functions.

We investigate cut elimination in multi-focused sequent calculi and the impact on the cut elimination proof of design choices in such calculi. The particular design we advocate is illustrated by a multi-focused calculus for full linear logic using an explicitly polarised syntax and incremental focus handling, for which we provide a syntactic cut elimination procedure. We discuss the effect of cut elimination on the structure of proofs, leading to a conceptually simple proof exploiting the strong structure of multi-focused proofs.