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Tuesday 8 September

Logic in Computer Science

Decoupling Evidence Sources in Paraconsistent Logic: A Generalized PAL2v Framework for Educational Assessment

Paraconsistent Annotated Logic with two values (PAL2v) annotates a proposition with a pair $(\mu,\lambda)$ of degrees of favorable and unfavorable evidence, drawn from a bilattice whose four extreme points are the values of Belnap and Dunn. In applications, however, the second coordinate is almost always taken to be the complement of the first, and several such annotations are then fused. We show that this practice determines the sign of the degree of contradiction in advance, independently of the data: for aggregation functions $F$ and $G$ the fused degree of contradiction equals $F-G^{d}$, where $G^{d}$ is the De Morgan dual of $G$, so that it vanishes identically when the two are dual, and has a constant sign otherwise. In particular the componentwise minimum used throughout the literature yields only consistent annotations, and the conjunction of annotated logic only exact ones; five of the twelve logical states, contradiction among them, are essentially unreachable by construction. We also give a decision procedure for the twelve states that is provably total, in place of the inequality lists in current use, which assign two states to about half of the non-extreme region. We then propose a construction in which the two coordinates are computed from disjoint families of evidence, show that every logical state is attainable. Educational assessment provides a natural instance, since summative and formative instruments are institutionally distinct: mapping examinations to $\mu$ and disengagement to $\lambda$ makes the degree of contradiction equal to the gap between what a student demonstrates and what that student invests. Simulations over three cohort profiles illustrate the classification.
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All authors Arthur Nakamura, David Drummond, Welbert Pereira, Gustavo Lahr, Kaique Matias de Andrade Roberto

Logic in Computer Science

Fast Constraint Extraction for Corrective Control under STL Specifications via Logical Dependency Tracking

Ensuring the satisfaction of Signal Temporal Logic (STL) specifications under uncertainty is challenging, as reachability-based monitoring provides guarantees but does not indicate how to restore satisfaction when it becomes indeterminate. A key difficulty is identifying which uncertain components actually affect global satisfaction, especially for nested formulas. This paper introduces a logical dependency tracking framework that propagates uncertainty through the STL structure and captures the causal contribution of reachable sets to satisfaction. By associating markers to uncertain predicates and propagating them via three-valued semantics, we extract in milliseconds a compact Disjunctive Normal Form (DNF) of sufficient constraints, avoiding combinatorial enumeration. As an application, we formulate control correction as a minimum-effort optimization problem. Using zonotopic reachability, the derived constraints are enforced via linear programming, yielding corrections that guarantee STL satisfaction under bounded uncertainty and provide certified probabilistic bounds in the stochastic case. We demonstrate the approach on a nonlinear system with nested STL specifications, showing that dependency tracking enables efficient and formally guaranteed correction. The tracking implementation is available at https://github.com/Antoine-Bst/STL-Three-Valued-Clause-Filtering/.
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All authors Antoine Besset, Joris Tillet, Chuchu Fan, Julien Alexandre dit Sandretto

Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.CL

StochBench: A Domain-Specific Benchmark for Stochastic Processes in Lean

Leading benchmarks for formal theorem proving with large language models are small collections drawn from competition math, such as the IMO and Putnam, that poorly represent field-specific applications. We introduce StochBench, a Lean 4 benchmark of 450 graduate stochastic-processes problems at varying abstraction levels, each paired with its natural-language source. Addressing a field underrepresented in Mathlib, it covers finite and countable Markov chains, renewal processes, random walks, martingales, stopping times, queues, Brownian motion, stochastic calculus, weak convergence, and Poisson and continuous-time Markov processes. Our Opus 4.8-based agent achieves a 34.9% proof rate (157/450) under a 15-minute per-problem limit. StochBench better represents domain-specific applied mathematics while remaining challenging for advanced provers.
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All authors Idan Davidovich, Debargha Ganguly, Vikash Singh, Vipin Chaudhary

Logic in Computer Science

Fitting and Learning Basis-Restricted Propositional Formulas

For a finite set $O$ of Boolean functions, we consider the class of propositional formulas built using the functions in $O$ as connectives. We determine, for each possible choice of $O$, the complexity of various fitting and learning problems. These include: finding a formula that fits a given labeled sample, finding a small one (an Occam algorithm), minimizing the number of misclassified examples when the sample is not realizable (empirical risk minimization), and several forms of PAC learning. Our results apply both to formulas (represented as trees) and to circuits. We also briefly discuss the status of the same questions for other kinds of propositional fragments.
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Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.LG

Length Generalization for Transformers via Compression

Recent advancements in transformer length generalization theory enable us to reliably predict when a transformer can learn to solve a task. In particular, the C-RASP hypothesis (a formalized version of the so-called RASP-l conjecture) posits that transformers length-generalize on a task if and only if a solution is expressible in the C-RASP language. While this hypothesis has strong empirical validation, theoretical problems arise from the fact that no computable length generalization bounds exist for C-RASP, alongside the discovery of seemingly contradictory experiments. To address these problems, we refine the C-RASP hypothesis utilizing the recently-proposed fragments C-RASP+ and C-RASP1. These fragments have computable length generalization bounds, though in the worst case requiring an extremely large (double exponential) sample size. It is an open question whether these sample size bounds are tight. In this paper, we resolve this open question by providing an exponentially tighter bound. In doing so, we show a polynomial length generalization bound for transformers if we adopt compressed strings, via a novel connection to power words. As an application, we show how this yields a fine-grained analysis of the C-RASP conjecture that resolves contradicting experimental evidence against it.
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All authors Georg Zetzsche, Hongjian Jiang, Andy Yang, Pascal Bergsträßer, Marco Sälzer, David Chiang, Anthony W. Lin

Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.PL

Erased Postulates, Identity Types and Quotients

This text is concerned with the question of whether, in type theory with erasure annotations, one can postulate that some type is inhabited and still have a guarantee that a program will not get stuck. Previous work has provided such guarantees for consistent erased postulates, i.e. postulates that are restricted to be used in erased contexts. Here those guarantees are extended to type theory with identity types. Similar ideas provide a simple way to support quotient types: it is shown that one can let things like "the equivalence classes for two related values are equal" be erased postulates and have an eliminator that only computes for the equivalence class constructor, and still get a guarantee that programs will compute correctly. Another question is whether programs compute correctly if one is allowed to transport (cast) using erased identity proofs. It is shown that this is safe in the absence of quotients and postulates, and in the presence of quotients and erased postulates that can be implemented using equality reflection. However, unrestricted transports of this kind are not compatible with erased, postulated univalence. For that reason the text includes a study of the function []-cong, which encapsulates a limited form of transport for erased identity proofs. The text is accompanied by machine-checked Agda proofs.
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Logic in Computer Science

Width-Bounded Equational Derivations for Finite Graph Expressions

Completeness of an equational presentation guarantees an equality path but need not control the resources used along it. For finite graph expressions we measure derivational space by the largest input-output interface of an intermediate raw term. For every finite doubly ranked edge alphabet $\Sigma$, we prove that equal closed expressions of pattern width at most $k$ are joined by a derivation in which every step applies an equation in either direction and every intermediate width is at most a computable $B_\Sigma(k)$, independently of graph size. The derivation uses only the structural magmoid laws and the fifteen finite-graphoid schemes. The construction compiles each expression through protected cores and finite routing windows to an encoding-canonical representative $\operatorname{NF}_k$ of width at most $4k+4$. We call this property bounded equational coherence. We also prove $\operatorname{bw}(F)\le\operatorname{patw}(F)\le4(\operatorname{tw}(F)+1)$ whenever the underlying simple graph has at least two edges, separate layered linear from branching expressions on cliques, and provide machine-checkable witnesses and finite invariants for the first five nontrivial clique values.
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Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.DB

Generalized DBLog: A Verified Contract for Interleaving Copied Rows with a Change Log

Change-data capture (CDC) feeds downstream systems like caches, search indexes, and data warehouses from a database's log of committed row changes. When bootstrapping, adding a table, or repairing downstream data, a pipeline must also copy existing rows. Merging this copy with the active log introduces the copy-to-log handoff problem. Changes must not fall through a gap, and older copied state must not overwrite a newer logged update or resurrect a deleted row. DBLog, developed at Netflix, addressed this problem by reading tables in chunks and interleaving those reads with the live log. Watermarks identify the changes that overlap each read, and the log wins when a copied row is stale. Debezium and Flink CDC have since adapted this design. Earlier work proved that applying the original algorithm's copied rows and logged changes in their emitted order reconstructs the source's rows, including the effect of every logged insert, update, and delete processed. Generalized DBLog asks when the same result holds for variants of that design. We state the conditions the source and capture implementation must satisfy. Once copying and reconciliation are complete, we prove that the result holds across all selected tables and key ranges even when their rows were read at different times. A single database snapshot is not required for the copy. Further logged changes advance the reconstructed state one event at a time. We establish these guarantees for classic watermarking, Debezium's signal-table and read-only modes, Flink CDC's parallel chunks, reads and dumps tied to exact log positions, and engine-consistent backups whose log position lies within known bounds. The complete theory is machine-checked in Isabelle/HOL, its core independently verified in Lean 4, and the protocols are also examined by bounded model checking in TLA+.
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Monday 7 September

Logic in Computer Science

Feasible disjunction for random resolution

We show that a (stronger) version of random resolution has the feasible disjunction property. This is the first instance of a proof system not known to have feasible interpolation, which nevertheless has the feasible disjunction property.

Logic in Computer Science

Automatic constraints with few subpowers and graphoid recognition

Finite automata can describe relations of unbounded arity that are exponentially larger than their descriptions. We prove that constraint satisfaction for such relations is solvable in polynomial time whenever their length slices are preserved by a common fixed edge operation on a finite domain. The algorithm computes compact representations of the complete solution relation and its projections. Its main ingredient is a polynomial-time compilation of nondeterministic finite automata into the fork witnesses and small projections required by the few-subpowers algorithm. In the Mal'tsev case, a direct proof is polynomial also when the domain and operation table are supplied as input, answering the Mal'tsev tractability question for automatic constraint satisfaction. We also characterize all invariant relations of a family of 3-edge algebras with neither Mal'tsev nor near-unanimity terms. Their normal forms combine Boolean activity constraints with affine value spaces and yield canonical quadratic-bit representations constructible from NFAs or arbitrary generators. For graphoid automata, these results give polynomial-time recognition without a graph-width restriction, effective boundary composition, and comparison of finite graph relations. The quadratic boundary bounds are optimal in the worst case. A fixed three-state example separates polynomial-time recognition from hard exact counting.
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Logic in Computer Science

Monadic Second-Order Logic in HOL: Deep and Shallow with Automated Faithfulness (Extended Preprint)

In Isabelle/HOL, we apply the deep-and-shallow embedding methodology of our prior work to monadic second-order logic (MSO). Three embeddings are developed side by side: a deep embedding (an inductive datatype with an explicit satisfaction relation); a maximal-shallow embedding that translates the connectives and quantifiers directly into HOL, carrying the interpretation and both assignments explicitly; and a minimal-shallow embedding – a locale that fixes those parameters, collapsing the formula type to bool. The enabling new ingredient is a two-sorted substitution apparatus – capture-avoiding substitution, renaming, and a substitution lemma per namespace – in which each binder is transparent for the other; faithfulness of all three embeddings is mechanised and largely automated. Our central contribution is a fully mechanised two-sorted downward Loewenheim-Skolem theorem: the minimal embedding recovers deep validity relative to the (countable) assignment ranges, and this range-relative reading is shown to coincide with the general (Henkin-style) reading of MSO, whereas the standard reading validates strictly more formulas, witnessed by comprehension. Both readings are nonetheless recovered from the minimal embedding, differing only in the admitted interpretations: all of them for the general reading, only the elementary substructures of the full model for the standard. We exercise the embeddings on classical MSO landmarks: the Boolean-closure and graph schemata hold under the full second-order domain yet fail in the minimal embedding, making the dichotomy concrete, while reachability and 2-colorability are refuted throughout.
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2609.07345 · 7 Sep · 38 pages. Extended version – with the full two-sorted Loewenheim-Skolem proof (Appendix A) and the rendered Isabelle/HOL theory sources (Appendix B) – of a contribution accepted to a Festschrift for David Basin (Springer LNCS); the proceedings version is 19 pages. The Isabelle/HOL formalisation is published in the Archive of Formal Proofs: https://isa-afp.org/entries/MSOinHOL.html

Logic in Computer Science

Optimising Metamath Proofs for Human Working Memory

Mathematical proofs vary in legibility. While most proof optimisation techniques seek to minimise proof size, the strategic reordering of inferences can reduce the working memory demand of proof checking without altering overall size. Metamath serves as a prime case study for this approach: its verification architecture requires proof steps to be ordered in a manner that prioritises algorithmic efficiency over readability. In this paper, we introduce algorithms to minimise both peak and cumulative memory consumption, applying the latter as a novel proxy for sustained human cognitive effort. We achieve this by representing proofs as directed acyclic graphs and modelling their execution as a pebbling game. Finding an optimal ordering via brute force is computationally infeasible, so we use heuristics to provide approximations. We apply these algorithms across Metamath's ZFC set theory library and present case studies demonstrating how automated reordering systematically improves the presentation of formal mathematics.
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Sunday 6 September

Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from math.LO

Inequalities and equalities of means in Constructive Mathematics

We study the inequalities and equalities of means of numbers in constructive mathematics. The parameters of such means are constructive real numbers. We show that it is impossible to have an algorithm that can always decide whether the two means are equal or not. Of course, this problem can always be solved if the parameters are rational numbers.
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Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from math.LO

Tag-system computation using only powers and principal logarithms

I show that one exact step of any tag system can be written as a single fixed expression using only powers and logarithms. A tag state is represented as an integer; evaluating the expression yields the integer encoding of the next configuration, and feeding the answer back into the same expression follows the computation step by step. The discrete part of the update comes from leveraging the wraparound in the principal complex logarithm, which effectively serves the same purpose as floor, mod, or sin in comparable approaches. The iterating expressions use only $x^y$ and $\log_b a$: it turns out that these two binary operations are sufficient, with no need for constants. It follows that reachability below a fixed threshold is undecidable for one fixed expression. As a separate application, the same mechanism represents addition, $2^x$, and remainder with the convention $x\bmod0=x$, and hence every Kalmár elementary function.
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Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.CR

Efficient Hardware Information-Flow Tracking for Pre-Silicon Security Testing

Register-Transfer Level (RTL) simulation is widely used to test hardware before it is fabricated. To allow testing for security related information flow properties, such as confidentiality and integrity, taint logic can be automatically added to the design to track how information flows through it. However, taint logic instrumented by the state-of-the-art, such as CellIFT, makes simulation-based testing prohibitively expensive: On our evaluation of Mega-BOOM (136K cells), it increases the instrumented design to 5.81x the original cell count and causes a 143.72x simulation slowdown. The taint logic could be simplified to improve simulation speed, but it will inevitably trade off its precision. This lightweight, imprecise taint logic will introduce false positives and may eventually result in even more overhead to check these false positives. This paper explores the research question of where precision is actually needed in the design to overcome the overhead of false positives. It presents CEGAR-T, a framework that automatically synthesizes taint logic that minimizes the taint-logic instrumentation overhead while guaranteeing no false positives (relative to the precise CellIFT baseline). We have implemented CEGAR-T and evaluated it on the safe instruction set problem for timing side-channel security across open-source RISC-V cores. Over all evaluated cores, CEGAR-T reduces both instrumentation and simulation overhead, in geometric-mean, from 5.64x to 1.42x and from 34.65x to 1.79x, respectively, without compromising the precision benefit of the CellIFT baseline.
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All authors Yu-Wei Fan, Yuheng Yang, Christine Guo, SooHyuk Cho, Thomas Bourgeat, Mengjia Yan, Sharad Malik

Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.PL

Staged Hybrid Quantum-Classical Programming

Hybrid quantum-classical computing systems consist of a classical control system that sends quantum circuits and receives measurement results from a quantum co-processor. Such systems allow us to model algorithms that require the classical control system to generate quantum circuits on the fly, potentially based on prior measurement results. This is challenging, as the classical control system must generate quantum circuits that manipulate live quantum states. In this setting, the classical control system is generating further quantum circuits while the quantum co-processor is internally maintaining the state of the live qubits; this is not ideal, since this not only is costly but also introduces additional sources of noise to the live qubits. Thus, we want to minimize the latency between receiving measurement results and sending the next quantum circuit to be executed by pre-computing quantum circuits. We introduce HyQ (pronounced haiku), a multi-modal language based on adjoint logic that pre-generates quantum circuits before executing a hybrid quantum-classical program. We achieve this by separating our semantics into two distinct stages: 1) compile-time generation of quantum circuits and classical runtime code and 2) execution of the classical runtime code that instruments the quantum co-processor. This separation between stages allows us to formally guarantee that all circuit-generation logic occurs before the instrumentation logic, i.e., the actual runtime, and minimizes the idling of the quantum co-processor at runtime. We give a type system, a circuit-normalization semantics for the compile-time stage, which eagerly performs all circuit-generation logic, and a runtime semantics for HyQ that corresponds to the second stage. We prove type preservation and progress for both semantics.
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All authors Chuta Sano, Peng Fu, Ryan Kavanagh, Jennifer Paykin, Brigitte Pientka

Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.PL

Expressive power of one-shot control operators and coroutines

Control operators, such as exceptions and effect handlers, provide a means of representing computational effects in programs abstractly and modularly. While most theoretical studies have focused on multi-shot control operators, one-shot control operators—which restrict the use of captured continuations to at most once—are gaining attention for their balance between expressiveness and efficiency. This study aims to fill the gap. We present a mathematically rigorous comparison of the expressive power among one-shot control operators, including effect handlers, delimited continuations, and even asymmetric coroutines. Following previous studies on multi-shot control operators, we adopt Felleisen's macro-expressiveness as our measure of expressiveness. We verify the folklore that one-shot effect handlers and one-shot delimited-control operators can be macro-expressed by asymmetric coroutines, but not vice versa. We explain why a previous informal argument fails, and how to revise it to make a valid macro-translation.
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Saturday 5 September

Logic in Computer Science

Differentiable Horn Programs: A Constructive Expressivity Theorem for Latent Rule Operators

We introduce LatentGamma, a differentiable operator on the unit cube $[0,1]^M$ designed as a smooth surrogate of Tarski's immediate consequence operator $\TP$ associated with a definite Horn program $P$ on $M$ atoms. The operator is built as a five-stage composition combining sigmoidal gating, softmax routing, and a residual update that enforces monotonicity by construction. We establish four theoretical results. First, the iterated sequence is coordinate-wise non-decreasing and bounded by $\ind$, hence converges to a fixed point of LatentGamma; the operator itself is lattice-monotone on $[0,1]^M$. Second, our constructive expressivity theorem shows that for every definite Horn program $P$ there exists a closed-form parameter assignment $\theta^*(P)$ and an explicit time bound $T_{\max}(P)$ such that the iterated sequence exactly reproduces $\TPinf(F_0)$ for every initial fact set $F_0$ throughout the window $[D(P, F_0), T_{\max}(P)]$, where $D(P, F_0) \leq M$ is the derivation depth. The window $T_{\max}$ is large in practice ($\geq 10^5$ for sparse programs) and reflects the finite-time nature of computation by smooth sigmoidal gates. Third, the oracle is robust to Gaussian noise on its body and head logits, with explicit non-asymptotic bounds. Fourth, we prove a matching information-theoretic lower bound on the parameter count. We provide a complete numerical validation on programs ranging from $M = 33$ to $M = 504$ atoms: oracle accuracy reaches $1.0000$ on $2000$ test cases with zero false-positive and false-negative rates, and the empirical noise tolerance $\sigma_{\max}$ scales precisely as the union bound $RM \cdot \Phi(-10/\sigma_\eta)$ predicts.
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Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.FL

From Ramsey-Based to Congruence-Based Constructions for Büchi Complementation

The very first construction by J. Richard Büchi himself for complementing a Büchi automaton relies on a fundamental lemma about the division of an arbitrary infinite word into consecutive finite words, which was cleanly proven by invoking a specialized theorem of Ramsey. For that reason, constructions of similar nature have subsequently been labeled as Ramsey-based. Nevertheless, it suffices to have a weaker form of the lemma where the finite words come from a finite number of congruence classes, rather than arbitrary classes, that form a partition of the set of all finite words. The weaker lemma, with support of nicer properties from a congruence, can be proven without Ramsey's theorem. A commonly adopted improvement on such complementation constructions also requires the working of a congruence. This paper recounts the history and reviews using more contemporary terminology wherever possible the relevant concepts and results, to advocate renaming of Ramsey-based constructions as congruence-based constructions.
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Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.DB

sheval: An RDF data shapes evaluation tool and test-suite for recursive shapes

Two different languages have been developed to validate RDF data based on the concept of a shape: ShEx and SHACL. In each language it is possible to define a shape that refers to itself, which is called a recursive shape. While in the case of ShEx, the semantics of recursive shapes is well defined and is part of the specification, in the case of SHACL, the semantics of recursive shapes is left to the implementation of the different SHACL engines. Consequently, the different SHACL engines show different behaviours when confronted with recursive shapes. In this paper we present sheval: an evaluation framework consisting of a tool and a test suite that can be used to compare the behaviour of different shapes technologies when confronted with recursive definitions. The tool has been used to evaluate and understand the differences in the implementation of recursive shapes in ShEx and SHACL. It provides a framework for testing and comparing the behaviour of different shape engines, helping to identify inconsistencies and potential issues, and providing a basis for further research and development in the field of shape-based validation of RDF data.
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All authors Shqiponja Ahmetaj, Iovka Boneva, Jan Hidders, Maxime Jakubowski, Jose-Emilio Labra-Gayo, Wim Martens, Filip Murlak, Cem Okulmus, Ognjen Savković, Mantas Šimkus, Dominik Tomaszuk

Friday 4 September

Logic in Computer Science

Trace-Tree Magmas: Proof-Producing Infinite Countermodels and 28 New Order-Five Austin Classifications

Finite model finders cannot witness an Austin law: an identity whose finite models are all trivial but which has a nontrivial infinite model. We introduce rank-decreasing sparse trace-tree magmas, finitely presented total operations on a countably infinite constructor-tree carrier. The default product pairs its arguments; finitely many positive Horn clauses define exceptions. Our main procedure derives clauses from symbolic evaluation traces. For every model found, it proves functionality of the exceptional relation by descent on constructor size, proves the identity by exhaustive symbolic case analysis, and emits a self-contained Lean 4 certificate. A least simultaneous fixed point gives an implementation-independent semantics, so bounded search may miss models but cannot invalidate certified results. On ETP's 96 order-five Austin candidates, we discover and Lean-verify infinite countermodels for 28 identities with no prior public classification in our audit. They form 14 duality classes and establish 28 new Austin classifications. Four ALPS-known cases bring the total to 32 certified candidates. On Canonical-4187, the deduplicated union of Order5-130 and the 4,141-row ALPS pool, a fresh trace run produces 636 certificates, all accepted by Judge v3. At equal resource limits, Vampire 5.0.1, E 3.5.1, and complete Twee 2.6.1 jointly prove implications in 94 canonical classes. Only Twee returns trusted counter-satisfiable outcomes, for 18 classes; independent finite-side certificates force 16 to be infinite. None of these ATPs emits an explicit model or Lean certificate, and none decides the 28 new classifications. To the best of our audit, this is the first automated system to synthesize this trace-tree model family, generate well-founded inversion proofs, and emit self-contained Lean 4 certificates.
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All authors Jiaming Zhao, Bing Wu, Tong Yang, Xu Miao

Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from quant-ph

AxQM: A Textbook-Scale Benchmark for Formal Proof Synthesis in a Library of Finite-Dimensional Quantum Mechanics

Formalizing mathematics in a proof assistant, where a machine checks every definition, statement and proof, has set a new standard of rigor. Large language models are now capable of formalizing autonomously, even at the scale of whole textbooks. We bring this standard of rigor to physics, where theoretical arguments carry idealizations that are rarely stated fully, and any logical gaps could have a cascading effect on interdependent results. Recognizing the need to evaluate autoformalization systems for physics, we release AxQM, 1,019 kernel-checkable proof-synthesis tasks over 479 items drawn from the textbook Quantum Computation and Quantum Information by Nielsen and Chuang. The tasks are stated in a custom Lean library of finite-dimensional quantum mechanics. By task count, it is the largest proof-synthesis benchmark in physics by a factor of four. AxQM is derived from a near-complete formalization of the formal portions of the textbook, so every task is guaranteed a solution, which we keep private. Grading of the benchmark is done deterministically by the Lean kernel, which checks that the proof compiles, that no sorry appears in it or in any declaration it depends on, and that it introduces no new axioms.
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All authors Weichen Winston Yin, Jacob M. Taylor, Dirk R. Englund, Frank H.L. Koppens

Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from math.CO

A Computational Obstruction to Swapping Area and Dinv: An Automata-Theoretic View of the $q,t$-Catalan Symmetry

Algebraic combinatorics often seeks bijections that explain identities between distributions object by object. Encoding combinatorial objects as words lets automata theory study such a bijection as a word-to-word computation and measure its memory, input access, and control of output order. This refines existence questions by asking which computational mechanisms a bijection requires. We develop this viewpoint for Dyck paths. Our motivating example is the $q,t$-Catalan polynomial. Let $D_n$ be the set of Dyck paths of semilength $n$, let $D=\bigcup_{n\ge 0}D_n$, and let $area, dinv, bounce \colon D\to\mathbb{N}$ be the standard statistics. Then, \[ C_n(q,t)=\sum_{P\in D_n}q^{area(P)}t^{bounce(P)} =\sum_{P\in D_n}q^{dinv(P)}t^{area(P)}. \] Haglund's zeta map $\zeta\colon D\to D$ gives a bijective proof: it preserves semilength and sends $(dinv,area)$ to $(area,bounce)$. By contrast, the full symmetry $C_n(q,t)=C_n(t,q)$ still lacks a direct explanation: no explicit, uniform, semilength-preserving bijection is known that swaps area and dinv on every Dyck path. Polyregular maps from automata theory provide a natural computational starting point, but we prove that neither $\zeta$ nor the classical height-sweep bijection witnessing Narayana symmetry is polyregular. The missing mechanism is global ordering by numerical levels whose range grows with the input. We call this a rank sort and introduce weighted-rank polyregular maps (WRP), extending polyregular maps by one such sort and containing both bijections. Nevertheless, WRP is a proper subclass of deterministic logspace. We prove that $\zeta^{-1}$ lies outside WRP and that no WRP map can realise a semilength-preserving area-dinv swap. Thus the rank-sorting strategy behind $\zeta$ cannot be extended within WRP to exchange the two statistics.
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All authors Jineon Baek, Byung-Hak Hwang, Joonhyun La, Hongseok Yang

Thursday 3 September

Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.FL

Languages and Recognition in a Category with Factorisation

Language recognition by homomorphisms is a central construction of algebraic language theory. Initially studied for monoids and semigroups, it has subsequently been expanded to other algebraic structures. Our new categorical account is based on fibrations, which have already seen other applications in automata theory. Languages and surjective homomorphisms give indeed rise to two fibrations, and the notion of language recognition is stable under reindexing. We develop this framework in a category with a factorisation system and address two main technical questions in the fibrational setting. First, we provide sufficient conditions under which languages have syntactic quotients (which is a generalisation of syntactic congruences) and we show how such quotients can be described in some concrete cases using a result by Slomiński. Second, we introduce sufficient conditions under which (regular) languages are closed under certain J-limits and J-colimits.
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Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.LG

Robust PAC Learning of Concurrent Stochastic Games

We introduce the first Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) learning framework for general-sum concurrent stochastic games (CSGs) with transition uncertainty, while addressing the challenge of Nash equilibrium (NE) existence. Our algorithm maintains data-driven $L^1$ confidence sets over transition kernels and solves a robust CSG to compute a social-welfare optimal $\varepsilon$-NE, using a robust MDP-based exploration mechanism to drive joint state-action coverage. Crucially, we introduce a Nash margin characterisation that enables principled reasoning about equilibrium existence: the framework either returns an $\varepsilon$-approximate NE whose social-welfare value is $\varepsilon$-close to optimal, or provides a sound certificate that no exact NE exists. Under a minimum reachability condition $p_{\mathrm{reach}}>0$ over relevant state-action pairs, the algorithm terminates after a polynomial number of trajectory samples, with sample complexity $\widetilde{O}\left( {R_{\max}^2 H^4 |S|^2 |A| / (p_{\mathrm{reach}} \varepsilon^2)} \right)$. Empirical results on benchmark CSGs demonstrate near-optimal performance, correct handling of equilibrium (non-)existence, and sample complexity consistent with theory.
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Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.CR

A Non-Formulable Theorem: A Fundamental Limit of Finite Syntactic Systems and Its Consequences for Security and AI

For every coherent and sufficiently expressive finite syntactic system S, we prove the existence of at least one theorem that S cannot produce autonomously. The result is a metatheorem: it proves the existence of a theorem, and applies to every finite syntactic system - security mechanisms, AI systems, formal verifiers, legal systems, economic models, and the formal system in which it is itself proved.
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Logic in Computer Science

Extending concurrent separation logic to the hardware level to verify the xv6 OS kernel on RISC-V with AI agents

MachCSL is a framework for verifying system software, such as an OS kernel, on top of low-level semantics of a RISC-V computer, based on the Sail RISC-V semantics. The key idea behind MachCSL is to adapt concurrent separation logic, based on Iris, to reasoning about low-level hardware execution at the sub-instruction level: page-table translation, TLB, privilege levels, configuration registers, instruction fetch/decode/execute, traps and interrupts, DMA, shared memory, power failures, etc. Reasoning at this level of detail ensures that the system software correctly manages all of the hardware details. Verifying software at this low level of abstraction is tedious, but LLM-based agents are capable of reasoning about such low-level details. As a case study, we verify the xv6 OS kernel (6,657 lines of C and assembly code), which provides a traditional Unix system call interface (processes, file system, file descriptors, and preemptive scheduling) and has substantial internal concurrency (multi-core support with fine-grained locking, shared memory, interrupts, DMA, etc.). In the verification process, we uncovered 11 bugs in the xv6 implementation, as well as one bug in the Sail RISC-V semantics, and one bug in Sail's Lean extraction. The verification effort took us 102 days, including the time to develop the MachCSL framework. On top of the verified xv6 kernel, we prove a theorem about console-level behavior: e.g., if the user types echo hello world as input on the UART console, the only output the system can produce is hello world (if there are no crashes or other errors). This theorem covers both the kernel and the init, sh, echo, cat, grep, sync, and seccomp binaries in the initial file system image.
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Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.PL

Typed Flexible-Arity Slotted E-Graphs: A Soundness Construction and an Alloy Case Study

Slotted e-graphs represent open terms modulo consistent renaming, while algebraic operators benefit from canonical sequence, bag, or set children. We compose the two at a specification level: typed slot-mapped invocations inhabit operator-declared ports whose sibling quotient and recursive flattening licenses are certified separately. A generic finite quotient presentation proves exactness of its least-orbit normal form, while certified records specify effective-support kernel extraction and collision. For abstract obligation traces carrying local endpoint certificates, we prove finite-unfolding equational soundness. An Alloy case study compares seven related pipeline arms on a frozen corpus and a controlled transformation suite.
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Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.DB

Property Testing for Recursive Query Languages

In the context of database querying, property testing provides a framework for testing query answers with high confidence while inspecting only a sublinear part of the database, through completion queries and size queries. A fundamental result of Chen and Yoshida (2019) states that non-satisfaction of a Boolean conjunctive query $q$ is testable with a constant number of such queries and one-sided error if and only if $q$ is equivalent to an $\alpha$-acyclic query. In this article, we initiate the study of property testing for recursive query languages, focusing on two-way regular path queries (2RPQs) and monadic Datalog. One of our main results is positive: non-answers to any 2RPQ are constant query testable with one-sided error. We extend this slightly to a certain class of monadic Datalog programs in which recursion is restricted to be linear and rule bodies must be $\alpha$-acyclic. Turning towards unrestricted monadic Datalog, we next show that if a monadic Datalog program $\Pi$ is not equivalent to an $\alpha$-acyclic program, then falsity of $\Pi$ is not constant query testable with one-sided error. This is under the assumption that all rule-bodies are self-join free. We leave open the case of monadic Datalog programs with $\alpha$-acyclic rule bodies that are not restricted to linear recursion, but observe as a first step that there exist $\alpha$-acyclic programs that are mildly non-linear and constant query testable with one-sided error.
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All authors Isolde Adler, Carsten Lutz, Quentin Manière, Marcin Przybyłko, Lukas Schulze

Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.RO

Predictive Zonotope Reduction: Precise Runtime Monitoring under Uncertainty

Robots operating in physical environments make control decisions based on uncertain sensor measurements, which can lead to unsafe or suboptimal actions. Runtime monitors that check their behavior against safety specifications must represent this uncertainty soundly. Zonotopes are a widely used representation, but continuously incorporating new measurements grows their order unboundedly, so monitors must periodically apply an over-approximating reduction. The choice of the reduction method substantially affects the zonotope's precision, yet existing approaches typically utilize a fixed method throughout the run, even though the optimal choice depends on the current state. This paper presents a Predictive Zonotope Reduction (PZR) approach, which frames reducer selection as an optimal control problem and solves it using beam-search model predictive control. Policy distillation into a small neural policy further provides substantially higher execution speed than model predictive control while maintaining improved performance, enabling uncertainty-aware runtime monitoring on resource-constrained real-time systems. We implement our approach in the RLola runtime monitoring framework and evaluate it on a 5-degree-of-freedom robotic arm simulated in MuJoCo, with sensor uncertainty modeled according to ISO 5725. Experiments on a Raspberry Pi 5 show that dynamic reduction significantly lowers false-positive rates in monitoring compared with static reduction strategies.
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All authors Vladimir Krsmanovic, Florian Kohn, Bernd Finkbeiner, Milan Simovic