Reference. Solving Guarded Domain Equations in Presheaves over Ordinals and Mechanizing It

Constructing solutions to recursive domain equations is a well-known, important problem in the study of programs and programming languages. Mathematically speaking, the problem is finding a fixed point (up to isomorphism) of a suitable functor over a suitable category. A particularly useful instance, inspired by the step-indexing technique, is where the functor is over (a subcategory of) the category of presheaves over the ordinal ω and the functors are locally-contractive, also known as guarded functors. This corresponds to step-indexing over natural numbers. However, for certain problems, e.g., when dealing with infinite non-determinism, one needs to employ trans-finite step-indexing, i.e., consider presheaf categories over higher ordinals. Prior work on trans-finite step-indexing either only considers a very narrow class of functors over a particularly restricted subcategory of presheaves over higher ordinals, or treats the problem very generally working with sheaves over an arbitrary complete Heyting algebra with a well-founded basis. In this paper we present a solution to the guarded domain equations problem over all guarded functors over the category of presheaves over ordinal numbers, as well as its mechanization in the Rocq Prover. As the categories of sheaves and presheaves over ordinals are equivalent, our main contribution is simplifying prior work from the setting of the category of sheaves to the setting of the category of presheaves and mechanizing it - presheaves are more amenable to mechanization in a proof assistant.

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Cite as @stepanenko-2025-solving (helia, typst) · \cite{stepanenko-2025-solving} (LaTeX)
BibTeX
bibtex · 14 lines
@inproceedings{stepanenko-2025-solving,
  doi = {10.4230/LIPICS.FSCD.2025.33},
  url = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSCD.2025.33},
  author = {Stepanenko, Sergei and Timany, Amin},
  keywords = {Domain Equations, Guarded Fixed Points, Fixed Points, Category Theory, Rocq, Presheaves, Ordinals, Theory of computation → Modal and temporal logics, Theory of computation → Type theory, Theory of computation → Denotational semantics, Theory of computation → Categorical semantics},
  language = {en},
  title = {Solving Guarded Domain Equations in Presheaves over Ordinals and Mechanizing It},
  volume = {337},
  pages = {33:1-33:24},
  publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik},
  year = {2025},
  copyright = {Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license},
  booktitle = {10th International Conference on Formal Structures for Computation and Deduction (FSCD 2025)}
}
hayagriva YAML (typst)
yaml · 16 lines
stepanenko-2025-solving:
  type: article
  title: Solving Guarded Domain Equations in Presheaves over Ordinals and Mechanizing It
  author:
  - Stepanenko, Sergei
  - Timany, Amin
  date: 2025
  page-range: 33:1-33:24
  url: https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSCD.2025.33
  serial-number:
    doi: 10.4230/LIPICS.FSCD.2025.33
  parent:
    type: proceedings
    title: 10th International Conference on Formal Structures for Computation and Deduction (FSCD 2025)
    publisher: Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik
    volume: 337
Cites 49 works (10 here)
With notes (10)

Modular Denotational Semantics for Effects with Guarded Interaction Trees frumin-2024-modular

We present guarded interaction trees — a structure and a fully formalized framework for representing higherorder computations with higher-order effects in Coq, inspired by domain theory and the recently proposed interaction trees. We also present an accompanying separation logic for reasoning about guarded interaction trees. To demonstrate that guarded interaction trees provide a convenient domain for interpreting higher-order languages with effects, we define an interpretation of a PCF-like language with effects and show that this interpretation is sound and computationally adequate; we prove the latter using a logical relation defined using the separation logic. Guarded interaction trees also allow us to combine different effects and reason about them modularly. To illustrate this point, we give a modular proof of type soundness of cross-language interactions for safe interoperability of different higher-order languages with different effects. All results in the paper are formalized in Coq using the Iris logic over guarded type theory.
PDF · DOI · arXiv · pldb

Transfinite Iris: resolving an existential dilemma of step-indexed separation logic spies-2021-transfinitex

PDF · DOI · pldb

Formalizing category theory in Agda hu-2021-formalizing

PDF · DOI · arXiv · pldb

Iris from the ground up: A modular foundation for higher-order concurrent separation logic jung_etal_iris_ground_up_2018

Iris is a framework for higher-order concurrent separation logic, which has been implemented in the Coq proof assistant and deployed very effectively in a wide variety of verification projects. Iris was designed with the express goal of simplifying and consolidating the foundations of modern separation logics, but it has evolved over time, and the design and semantic foundations of Iris itself have yet to be fully written down and explained together properly in one place. Here, we attempt to fill this gap, presenting a reasonably complete picture of the latest version of Iris (version 3.1), from first principles and in one coherent narrative.
PDF · DOI · pldb

Interactive proofs in higher-order concurrent separation logic krebbers-2017-interactive

PDF · DOI · pldb

Higher-order ghost state jung_higher-order_2016

The development of concurrent separation logic (CSL) has sparked a long line of work on modular verification of sophisticated concurrent programs. Two of the most important features supported by several existing extensions to CSL are higher-order quantification and custom ghost state. However, none of the logics that support both of these features reap the full potential of their combination. In particular, none of them provide general support for a feature we dub “higher-order ghost state”: the ability to store arbitrary higher-order separation-logic predicates in ghost variables. In this paper, we propose higher-order ghost state as a interesting and useful extension to CSL, which we formalize in the framework of Jung et al.‘s recently developed Iris logic. To justify its soundness, we develop a novel algebraic structure called CMRAs (“cameras”), which can be thought of as “step-indexed partial commutative monoids”. Finally, we show that Iris proofs utilizing higher-order ghost state can be effectively formalized in Coq, and discuss the challenges we faced in formalizing them.
PDF · DOI · pldb

Category Theory in Coq 8.5 timany-2016-category

We report on our experience implementing category theory in Coq 8.5. Our work formalizes most of basic category theory, including concepts not covered by existing formalizations, in a library that is fit to be used as a general-purpose category-theoretical foundation.

Our development particularly takes advantage of two features new to Coq 8.5: primitive projections for records and universe polymorphism. Primitive projections allow for well-behaved dualities while universe polymorphism provides a relative notion of largeness and smallness. The latter is one of the main contributions of this paper. It pushes the limits of the new universe polymorphism and constraint inference algorithm of Coq 8.5.

In this paper we present in detail smallness and largeness in categories and the foundation they are built on top of. We furthermore explain how we have used the universe polymorphism of Coq 8.5 to represent smallness and largeness arguments by simply ignoring them and entrusting them to the universe inference algorithm of Coq 8.5. We also briefly discuss our experience throughout this implementation, discuss concepts formalized in this development and give a comparison with a few other developments of similar extent.

DOI

Univalent categories and the Rezk completion ahrens_etal_2015

We develop category theory within Univalent Foundations, which is a foundational system for mathematics based on a homotopical interpretation of dependent type theory. In this system, we propose a definition of ‘category’ for which equality and equivalence of categories agree. Such categories satisfy a version of the univalence axiom, saying that the type of isomorphisms between any two objects is equivalent to the identity type between these objects; we call them ‘saturated’ or ‘univalent’ categories. Moreover, we show that any category is weakly equivalent to a univalent one in a universal way. In homotopical and higher-categorical semantics, this construction corresponds to a truncated version of the Rezk completion for Segal spaces, and also to the stack completion of a prestack.
DOI · arXiv

Homotopy Type Theory: Univalent Foundations of Mathematics hottbook

Web · arXiv

First steps in synthetic guarded domain theory: step-indexing in the topos of trees birkedalFirstStepsSGDT2012

We present the topos S of trees as a model of guarded recursion. We study the internal dependently-typed higher-order logic of S and show that S models two modal operators, on predicates and types, which serve as guards in recursive definitions of terms, predicates, and types. In particular, we show how to solve recursive type equations involving dependent types. We propose that the internal logic of S provides the right setting for the synthetic construction of abstract versions of step-indexed models of programming languages and program logics. As an example, we show how to construct a model of a programming language with higher-order store and recursive types entirely inside the internal logic of S. Moreover, we give an axiomatic categorical treatment of models of synthetic guarded domain theory and prove that, for any complete Heyting algebra A with a well-founded basis, the topos of sheaves over A forms a model of synthetic guarded domain theory, generalizing the results for S.
DOI
External (39)
stepanenko-2025-solving reference entries/refs/stepanenko-2025-solving/stepanenko-2025-solving.hel