We present a construction which, under suitable assumptions, takes a model of Moggi’s computational λ-calculus with sum types, effect operations and primitives, and yields a model that is adequate and fully abstract. The construction, which uses the theory of fibrations, categorical glueing, ⊤⊤-lifting, and ⊤⊤-closure, takes inspiration from O’Hearn & Riecke’s fully abstract model for PCF. Our construction can be applied in the category of sets and functions, as well as the category of diffeological spaces and smooth maps and the category of quasi-Borel spaces, which have been studied as semantics for differentiable and probabilistic programming.

A fully abstract compiler guarantees that two source components are observationally equivalent in the source language if and only if their translations are observationally equivalent in the target. Full abstraction implies the translation is secure: target-language attackers can make no more observations of a compiled component than a source-language attacker interacting with the original source component. Proving full abstraction for realistic compilers is challenging because realistic target languages contain features (such as control effects) unavailable in the source, while proofs of full abstraction require showing that every target context to which a compiled component may be linked can be back-translated to a behaviorally equivalent source context.

We prove the first full abstraction result for a translation whose target language contains exceptions, but the source does not. Our translation—specifically, closure conversion of simply typed λ-calculus with recursive types—uses types at the target level to ensure that a compiled component is never linked with attackers that have more distinguishing power than source-level attackers. We present a new back-translation technique based on a shallow embedding of the target language into the source language at a dynamic type. Then boundaries are inserted that mediate terms between the untyped embedding and the strongly-typed source. This technique allows back-translating non-terminating programs, target features that are untypeable in the source, and well-bracketed effects.