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Computer Science Logic in Computer Science

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Monday 14 September

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

Legislating World-Model-Based Planning with Legal Reasoning

As robotic systems grow more general, legal norms are needed to integrate them into society. This paper extends the isomorphism problem of aligning legal source texts with their encodings, and measures two key challenges to robot normative control: (1) the grounding isomorphism gap, where perception error grounds false atoms for legal reasoning, and (2) the ontological isomorphism gap, where one legal conclusion admits many faithful translations into planning constraints. The paper introduces a legal planning stack that employs Defeasible Deontic Logic (DDL) to constrain a motion planner. The stack leverages learned world models to plan and to provide legal context, enabling ex ante governance that intervenes before an illegal action is executed. It was deployed on a simulated robot arm pushing a cube across a 3x3 grid. The findings were (1) the legislated agent abided substantially more often than the non-legislated one, and modeling perception uncertainty lifted abidance even further, (2) the legal reasoning ran efficiently at runtime and its verdicts were auditable, and (3) the stack adapted to exogenous signals and endogenous rule changes. Both gaps were measured: (4) world model and probe error corrupted the factual input for the DDL reasoner, and (5) a single law admitted several faithful metric interpretations yielding drastically different abidance. Thus, ex ante legislation functions as intended, and closing these gaps with a standardized mapping from the law to runtime constraints and improved fact grounding from perception will yield robust laws that align robot behavior with society's norms. Project page: https://dylanwaldner-cail.github.io/Legislated-Planner/.
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All authors Dylan Waldner, Yiannis Kantaros, Guido Governatori, Risto Miikkulainen, Amir Banifatemi

Logic in Computer Science

A Lean Paper About Paper: A Formal Framework for Origami

The mathematics of Origami have been well studied and shown to develop several interesting results. We use Lean 4 tactics and build on Mathlib to redefine the 7 Huzita operations as theorems instead of axioms and prove their existence. We develop proofs for important origami constructions (such as trisecting an angle), implement origami-constructible numbers and prove the associated Cardano's formula, and formalize Haga's theorem. A Crease Pattern Inspector explores physical folding by providing a full pipeline to create and visualize models constrained by the Huzita formalism. The Lean codebase brings 100+ theorems and lemmas.
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All authors Celio Boulay, Alexander Chai, Anthony Chang, Thomas Moulin

Sunday 13 September

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

The Case for Automated Hyperspecialization: Evidence from SAT

The software status quo is to use one system to process many different kinds of inputs. In contrast, we propose hyperspecialization: creating new software that is optimized for a single class of inputs. Hyperspecializing manually is anywhere from expensive to impossible. We conjecture that coding agents make automated hyperspecialization cheap, effective, and safe for problems with measurable performance and checkable output. This paper explores one such problem, SAT solving, by synthesizing hundreds of workload-specific SAT solvers at an average cost of \$37 each. Our specialists outperform their competition-winning, general-purpose cousins by 5$\times$ on average, and by over $10\times$ on a quarter of benchmark families. A general-purpose solver constructed from over a hundred of our prototype hyperspecialists won the SAT track at the 2026 SAT Competition.
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Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from quant-ph

Linear equations mod $n$ are pseudo-telepathic

We prove that the quantum monad in dimension $2n$ admits no natural transformation to the polymorphism clone of linear equations modulo $n$. Consequently, for every $n\geq 2$, there exists an unsatisfiable system of linear equations over $\mathbb{Z}_n$ whose constraint system game admits a perfect finite-dimensional quantum strategy. As a corollary, we completely characterise pseudo-telepathic constraint languages in finite dimension. The proof combines a result of Harding, Jager, and Smith on group-valued measures on subspaces of Hilbert spaces with the polymorphism-minion characterisation of quantum pseudo-telepathy.
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Logic in Computer Science

A Hybrid Dependency-Aware Framework for Task Decomposition and Dynamic Agent Generation in Oracle-to-PostgreSQL Migration

Large language model (LLM)-based database migration is often treated as direct code transformation, although enterprise Oracle systems contain heterogeneous SQL and PL/SQL artifacts with different dependencies, execution order, complexity, and validation needs. This paper proposes a hybrid dependency-aware framework that identifies migration tasks, builds a cross-file dependency graph, condenses cyclic dependencies, and uses task specifications to generate specialized migration agents at runtime. The deterministic path combines ANTLR-based parsing with typed dependency extraction, while an LLM fallback is invoked only for units that cannot be parsed reliably. On a corpus of 116 Oracle files, the pipeline produced 1,037 units with zero coverage gaps and 1,271 AST-derived dependencies. The fallback processed 165 parse-error units, recovered 496 additional validated dependencies, eliminated unresolved-dependency units, and increased resolved internal edges from 446 to 527. The graph contained four dependency-respecting phases, while cycle handling was validated separately using Tarjan SCC condensation. A complementary experiment on 1,006 PL/SQL files regenerated 623 scripts (~62%), of which 380 (~61%) executed successfully in PostgreSQL 16. Tables achieved about 85% regeneration success, whereas no query regenerations succeeded under the evaluated specification-mediated baseline, and procedural objects remained strongly dependent on schema context. These results motivate dependency-aware context delivery, task-specific validation, and differentiated agent routing. The paper also formalizes task-to-agent mapping, introduces monitoring and diagnostics for execution feedback, and defines a controlled comparison of monolithic, static-decomposition, dependency-aware, and dynamically orchestrated migration strategies.
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All authors Oleg Grynets, Oleg Kaskun, Alona Seletska, Daryna Tukalo, Vasyl Lyashkevych

Logic in Computer Science

New Proofs of Weak Normalization for Propositional Logic

We present new proofs of weak normalization for intuitionistic and classical propositional logics (with the full set of operators – falsum, implication, conjunction and disjunction). These proofs work with cuts rather than cut segments, and they provide explicit “local” rules for determining whether to contract a whole proof or reduce one of its subproofs, and in the latter case, which subproof to reduce. Interestingly, much of the complication in the case of intuitionistic logic is due to the disjunction elimination rule, while our version of the same rule for classical logic has falsum as conclusion always, and so is much easier to handle. All the complication in the case of classical logic shifts to cuts involving the reductio ad absurdum rule. We also discuss a formalization of the entire proof in Lean, and present a deterministic algorithm for weak normalization.
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Saturday 12 September

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

On the Number of Distinct Topological Bases of a Finite Set of Size $N$

For a finite set $S$ with $\lvert S\rvert = N$, the number of families $\mathcal{B} \subseteq \mathcal{P}(S)$ that are topological bases is $\#(N) = \sum_{\mathcal{T} \in \operatorname{Top}(S)} 2^{\lvert\mathcal{T}\rvert - \lvert\mathcal{M}_{\mathcal{T}}\rvert}$, where $\mathcal{M}_{\mathcal{T}}$ is the canonical minimal basis of minimal open neighborhoods. The identity is proved in Lean 4 / Mathlib (`CARDB.lean`): bases generating $\mathcal{T}$ are exactly the sets with $\mathcal{M}_{\mathcal{T}} \subseteq \mathcal{B} \subseteq \mathcal{T}$. The small-$N$ table and the discrete-dominance sandwich are proved in `CARDB/SmallN.lean` and `CARDB/Asymptotics.lean`.
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Logic in Computer Science

Neuron Activation-based Computation of Logical Explanations for Deep Neural Networks

Formal explainability of classifying neural networks (NNs) is an active area of research, providing explanations with provable guarantees of the classification within continuous regions of the input feature space. However, the existing techniques are either limited to individual input features without guarantees on their relations or the provided solutions fail to scale to deep architectures. This paper addresses these issues by introducing a flexible symbolic framework for an efficient, guided computation of explanations of the NN behavior, parametrized by the activations of internal neurons, and using logical engines such as SMT solvers. Unlike prior methods that rely on specialized NN verifiers, our method yields explanations that are not restricted in shape. Our algorithm is implementable on top of a general-purpose logical solver, isolating the NN-specific encoding from the algorithmic framework. We experimented with a wide range of benchmarks from the domains of image recognition and medicine, illustrating the advantages of the new method, particularly in computational efficiency. Notably, our approach enables logical explanation of deep networks not amenable to prior logic-based methods.
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All authors Tomáš Kolárik, Faezeh Labbaf, Fabrizio Leopardi, Grigory Fedyukovich, Michael Wand, Natasha Sharygina

Logic in Computer Science

Specification-Driven Data Architecture Reconstruction: From Physical Code to Logical and Conceptual Specifications

Legacy database migrations often begin with incomplete or outdated documentation, leaving physical data definition language (DDL) as the principal evidence of data architecture. However, DDL does not fully encode conceptual intent, and model-generated completions can be plausible without being correct. This study proposes and evaluates a provenance-aware, deterministic-first pipeline for reconstructing logical and conceptual data specifications from Oracle-oriented DDL while explicitly separating observed facts, deterministic derivations, and large language model (LLM) suggestions. The pipeline performs DDL investigation, parsing, consolidation, primary-key backfilling, type normalization, and declared relationship-graph construction before optional LLM-assisted enrichment. It preserves source provenance in the deterministic catalog and declared relationship graph, and records inferred primary-key and foreign-key candidates in a separate reviewable overlay. We evaluated the implementation on 249 artifactized schema samples comprising 1,225 SQL files. The pipeline completed 244 samples (97.99%); 52 completed samples contained no extractable DDL. Across completed samples, the deterministic path reconstructed 208 tables and recovered 278 declared foreign-key records; 168 of the reconstructed tables lacked an explicitly parsed primary key before backfilling. LLM enrichment generated 100 foreign-key candidates in 36 samples, but the parent-table admissibility rate was only 17.9% for logical-specification candidates and 17.5% for conceptual-specification candidates. These findings show that the proposed deterministic-first architecture can preserve an auditable structural baseline, quantify observed primary-key and relationship gaps, and prevent model-generated hypotheses from being silently promoted to source-grounded architectural facts.
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Logic in Computer Science

Mechanizing Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems and Provability Logic

We mechanized proof of Gödel's first and second incompleteness theorems, Solovay's arithmetical completeness theorem of \mathbf{GL}, and related results in the Lean 4 theorem prover.

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

IBBench-Light: A Paired Evaluation of Task-Conditioned Responses to External Directives

An external record may contain a procedure to apply or text to read, depending on the user's request. IBBench-Light tests both uses against the same record. Twelve semantic bases yield 144 matched pairs per model; four quantized instruction models produced 1,152 archived greedy responses. Paired exact-contract accuracy (PECA) requires both members to satisfy their output contracts. Qwen succeeds on 132 execute and 109 process prompts, but only 97 complete pairs, showing what marginal averages omit. We audit literal-target exposure and case normalization, then add 1,722 logged CPU generations to test directive-absent controls, twelve additional semantic bases, within-base wording changes, and generation stopping. In the pinned Phi rerun, changing the end-of-sequence (EOS) set changes exact paired success from 0/144 to 62/144. A bounded IHEval comparison uses the same SmolLM2 checkpoint and output budget while preserving its published instruction roles and scorer. The benchmark measures conditional task and output-contract success. Its task margins and paired count need to be read together with the stopping policy.
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All authors Kainan Zhou, Zhaoyi Li, Janet Sung, Gangzhen Qian, Hang Xiao

Friday 11 September

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

Comparative Framework Analysis for Enterprise Generative AI Applications: Chatbot, Automation, and Oracle-to-PostgreSQL Migration

This study compares framework suitability across three classes of enterprise generative AI applications: a documentation-based development assistant, an email and inquiry automation system, and an Oracle-to-PostgreSQL migration tool. The analysis evaluates component boundaries, orchestration, policy retrieval or reasoning, model integration, deterministic validation, persistence, observability, and operational efficiency. Across the three applications, the evidence supports layered architectures in which probabilistic components generate proposals, while deterministic components retain authority over routing, authorization, validation, persistence, idempotency, and final outcomes. The results indicate that framework suitability depends on the application, deployment conditions, and component responsibility: search quality, workflow control, safety behavior, and migration validation cannot be reduced to a single cross-application assessment. Therefore, the study substantiates the need for framework selection at the component level, supported by explicit contracts, application-specific evidence, and independent validation boundaries.
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All authors Oleg Grynets, Olena Pochernina, Alona Seletska, Daryna Tukalo, Dmytro Kostetskyi, Ivan Fedorchuk, Vasyl Lyashkevych

Logic in Computer Science

Positive Topology and Feasible Refinement: Forcing Matrices, Positivity, and Information

We develop a conceptual and operational account of Positive Topology starting from a basic relation between points or models and observable properties. From this relation, two complementary structures emerge. The first captures universal refinement and cover: what must hold across all relevant cases and how information can be systematically refined. The second captures positivity and witnessed existence: what can be positively realized and sustained without relying on classical complements. A central result shows that the underlying relation between points and observables can be reconstructed from either of these induced structures. We also clarify the distinction between point-based and pointfree formulations: when points are available, positivity can be derived from the underlying forcing relation, while in the formal pointfree setting positivity is taken as primitive and its compatibility with cover is imposed axiomatically. We develop two complementary interpretations of the framework. The first is information-theoretic, viewing cover as refinement of partial information and positivity as witnessed feasibility. The second is game-theoretic, viewing positivity as the ability of a witness or hypothesis to survive successive legitimate refinements. The final part of the paper is deliberately programmatic. We outline how resource constraints, verification costs, and finite budgets can be incorporated into the framework. This leads to resource-sensitive notions of forcing, cover, positivity, and refinement, and raises new questions about how these structures behave as available resources change. Examples from medical diagnosis, legal reasoning, and AI systems illustrate the potential relevance of the approach to grounded, explainable, and resource-aware inference.
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Logic in Computer Science

Perturbation equivalence in labelled Markov chains

Behavioural equivalences, such as language equivalence and probabilistic bisimilarity, are fundamental techniques for reducing the size of probabilistic models. However, these equivalences are sensitive to the precise values of transition probabilities, making them unsuitable in applications where probabilities are subject to approximation. Motivated by settings in which the support graph of a labelled Markov chain is known but the transition probabilities are uncertain, we study robust variants of these equivalences. We introduce universal (perturbation) equivalence, which captures a variant of equivalence that is resilient to all perturbations of transition probabilities: two states or distributions are universally equivalent if they remain equivalent under every assignment of transition probabilities consistent with the support graph. We also consider the dual notion of existential (perturbation) equivalence, which holds whenever there exists an assignment of transition probabilities that yields equivalence. We establish that, for states, universal language equivalence coincides with universal probabilistic bisimilarity and develop a characterisation that yields a polynomial-time partition refinement algorithm. We implement the algorithm and demonstrate experimentally that it is effective as a technique for robust model reduction. We further show that universal language equivalence for distributions is closely related to the state case, and prove NL-completeness of deciding universal equivalence for both states and distributions. We prove that, for states, existential language equivalence coincides with existential probabilistic bisimilarity and deterministic witness transition functions always suffice, leading to an NP-completeness result. In contrast, we show that existential language equivalence for distributions is complete for the existential theory of the reals.
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All authors Syyeda Zainab Fatmi, Stefan Kiefer, James C. A. Main, David Parker

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

Medvedev logic is undecidable

We show that Medvedev's logic of finite problems, a well-known superintuitionistic logic, is undecidable. The key method is a reduction from the periodic tiling problem to non-theoremhood in Medvedev's logic. This settles a longstanding open problem. Using similar techniques, but reducing instead to the ordinary tiling problem, we likewise obtain undecidability of Skvortsov's logic of infinite problems, and the fact that the two logics are distinct – in fact, they are separated by any aperiodic tiling of the plane. Due to the fact that Medvedev's logic figures in so many different areas, these results have implications for several fields – for example, the study of schematic fragments of logics such as propositional dependence logic, or the study of internal logics of toposes. The core idea and technical work of the undecidability proof were obtained using ChatGPT Sol 5.6, and formally verified in Lean by Claude Opus 5. A detailed methodology section outlines how such results were obtained.
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Logic in Computer Science

Supermartingale Certificates for Parametric MDPs

We consider the problems of formal verification and synthesis in parametric Markov decision processes (MDPs) with general measurable state and action spaces. The heart of our approach is a parameter flattening transformation, which allows us to transform parametric MDPs into semantically equivalent non-parametric MDPs. Building on this transformation, we introduce the novel notion of parametric supermartingale certificates, which generalize the traditional supermartingale certificates—used for non-parametric MDPs—to the parametric setting. We use our parametric supermartingale certificates to design algorithms for verification and approximate synthesis in polynomial arithmetic parametric MDPs. This leads to the first verification and synthesis algorithms for parametric MDPs with general state and action spaces. We implement our algorithms and experimentally evaluate them on several continuous parametric random walk benchmarks.
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Thursday 10 September

Logic in Computer Science

A Catalogue of Properties of Binary Relations: Entailments, Incompatibilities, and Independence Results

We study fifteen properties of binary relations that have established uses in modal logic, order and preference theory, and relation algebra. The organising question is pragmatic: once some properties of a relation are known, which further properties follow, which combinations force degeneracy, and which properties remain independent? We give a proved Horn basis of elementary and compound entailments, explicit countermodels for non-entailments, and a relation-algebraic translation of all fifteen properties. The modal discussion includes the usual Scott–Lemmon correspondences and the logic of transitive dense frames studied by Ghilardi and Mints. Exhaustive finite enumeration and targeted model search are used for discovery, while the catalogue is certified in Lean. A kernel-checked coverage calculation ranges over all 2^15 = 32,768 antecedent sets and all fifteen possible consequents. Its 51-rule Horn manifest is coupled definitionally to Lean proofs of semantic soundness, and its 49 witness rows are coupled definitionally to Lean-certified finite or infinite relations. Consequently, over non-empty domains, the Horn closure is complete for positive entailment among the fifteen selected properties, and the consistency classification is complete for their positive combinations.
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Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.SE

Learning to adapt GR(1) specifications through degradation

Reactive synthesis is a powerful tool for generating correct-by-construction controllers from formal specifications. GR(1) is an assume-guarantee specification framework that enables efficient synthesis, allowing synthesised controllers to be used in a wide array of applications. The limitation of such controllers is that, should they encounter environment behaviour unspecified in the assumptions of the specification, the specified system guarantees are no longer ensured. Our work proposes an approach based on oracle-guided inductive synthesis to adapt the specification to be consistent with the observed assumption violation, while degrading system guarantees as little as possible to maintain realisability. Our methodology discovers multiple potential solutions, so we propose a preference criteria, based on the ability of the specification to enable robustness under adaptation. Although our approach is capable of degrading the entire specification, for our case studies we successfully discover degradations that preserve the entire set of original guarantees.
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Logic in Computer Science

A Lumpability-Driven Taxonomy of Strong and Weak Stochastic Bisimilarities with Their Congruence Properties

We study the relationships among the stochastic bisimulation-style equivalences over PEPA - Performance Evaluation Process Algebra definable according to the well known notions of lumpability for the continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs) underlying process terms. Lumpability is a central tool in the analysis of a CTMC, because it results in aggregations of the state space enjoying properties that are useful for efficiently computing the state probability distribution of the original chain. At the level of process terms, various stochastic bisimilarities accounting for activity types and cumulative rates can be defined over PEPA, which induce different kinds of lumping. Since the formalisations of some of them are scattered across the literature, where they appear under different, and sometimes clashing, names, we collect them within a single, uniform framework, renaming each bisimilarity in a consistent way after the kind of lumping it induces. We present strong and weak variants of what we call ordinary, exact, and strict bisimilarities and show that they respectively induce ordinary, exact, and strict lumpings. We then organise the six bisimilarities into a taxonomy establishing all and only the inclusions holding among them. We also analyse how the taxonomy changes in three special cases: process terms whose underlying CTMCs are time reversible, process terms with no activities of unobservable types, and process terms with no recursion. The paper concludes by investigating the compositionality properties of the six bisimilarities. Some of them are not congruences with respect to the prefix and/or choice operators of PEPA. In that case we single out either a set of process terms over which congruence with respect to those operators is achieved, or the coarsest congruence with respect to them that is contained in the considered bisimilarity.
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All authors Riccardo Romanello, Andrea Esposito, Marco Bernardo, Carla Piazza, Sabina Rossi

Logic in Computer Science

Warrant Theory

In this paper, we develop warrant theory as a philosophical discipline concerned with the inferential legitimacy of propositions within logical analysis. Warrant theory reconceptualises logic as a normative framework governing the conditions under which propositions may be introduced, accepted, rejected, and inferentially employed. Warrant is understood as inferential entitlement and is distinguished from truth, belief, and other psychological attitudes, while its relation to inferential use and meaning is examined. Warrant-theoretic analysis is then developed as a systematic method for investigating how propositions acquire inferential standing, how that standing develops, and how inferential positions interact through relations of dependence, compatibility, incompatibility, and exclusion. Acceptance and rejection provide the bilateral vocabulary for representing positive and negative inferential positions and the consequences and commitments associated with them. Finally, these elements are brought together in a warrant-theoretic definition of logic as the formal and normative study of the conditions under which propositions may be legitimately accepted or rejected and of the inferential transitions that such legitimacy warrants. On this account, logical consequence and logical failure are understood through the presence, preservation, or absence of inferential entitlement, thus locating the philosophical subject matter of logic in the systematic governance of inferential legitimacy.
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Logic in Computer Science

Medvedev Logic is Not Decidable. It is {\pi}01 -complete. Who Would Have Guessed?

This project began as an attempt to prove that Medvedev logic is decidable with the help of generative AI systems. The author (as well as the generative AI systems, or at least they claim to be since I have asked them) was surprised by its eventual conclusion. We prove that Medvedev logic ML, the intermediate logic of finite problems, is Pi-01-complete under computable many-one reductions. Consequently, ML is not recursively enumerable, a fortiori undecidable, and admits no recursively enumerable sound and complete proof calculus. The proof connects the periodic domino problem with intuitionistic formulas through a shared intermediate structure that we call a Wang-Medvedev pair. Such a pair consists of a finite partially ordered set of roles together with demands. Demands define the interaction between roles. A realization labels nonempty subsets of a finite set with these roles, respecting the order and satisfying the demands. We associate a pair with each finite Wang system and show that it has a realization iff the system tiles a finite torus. We then construct an intuitionistic formula that fails on some finite Medvedev frame iff the same pair is realizable. Realizability thus provides the link between periodic tilings and the countermodels.
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Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.AI

Extending SMT Solving with Non-Ground Clause Learning

Quantifier instantiation is currently the main approach to non-ground SMT solving: solvers generate ground instances and solve the resulting ground SMT problems with CDCL(T)-style reasoning. When a conflict is found, conflict analysis learns only a ground clause, even though the conflict comes from instances of non-ground clauses. Yet non-ground reasoning can give exponentially shorter proofs than purely ground reasoning. We propose a calculus that consists of ground instantiations, CDCL(T)-style rules, and non-ground conflict analysis. The solver reasons on ground instances, but the resolution steps of conflict analysis are performed on their original non-ground clauses. This produces learned clauses that are typically more general than the ground conflict. With a suitable strategy, the learned clauses are even non-redundant. We also show how chronological backtracking can be included in SMT solving. Our calculus gives a common setting for CDCL(T)-style SMT solving, a range of instantiation-based procedures, and non-ground clause learning, and we prove that it simulates CDCL, SCL(FOL), SCL(T), and even Resolution.
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Logic in Computer Science

Statistical Symmetry Release for Equivariant Quantum Learning

Hard symmetry constraints reduce model complexity, but can also erase label information. Statistical symmetry release determines when finite data and quantum measurements justify relaxing such a constraint, which directions to open, and how far to move. We connect global signal detection to local, loss-dependent improvement. A two-copy twirl–swap gate estimates task information in the symmetry-breaking complement with a dimension-independent copy count under paired-state and group-unitary access; reweighting the same records resolves representation sectors. An exact duality distinguishes this Hilbert–Schmidt signal from the larger signal accessible to bounded-outcome readouts. Local improvement is governed by the release gradient and a loss-corrected double-commutator matrix. Simultaneous confidence bounds convert empirical direction selection into certified descent, using either shared Pauli measurements or scalar probes with state-independent truncation bounds. Gaussian testing lower bounds quantify the cost of searching over unknown directions in the calibrated local experiment. Independent validation controls adaptively generated models, and a fast squared-loss bound preserves the approximation–estimation rate of a nested release path. On an eight-qubit Ising model, shared measurements certify release with 6300 times fewer shots than the specified scalar estimator on the tested budget grids. Quotient quantum natural gradient then controls parameter redundancy during training. Together, these results turn symmetry relaxation into a statistically justified model-selection decision.
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Logic in Computer Science

Rice's Theorem under Self-Modification: Elevation Operators and a Normal Form

We ask whether it can be certified algorithmically that a self-modifying program keeps a behavioural property, a safety property in the motivating case, after its next rewrite (preservation) and along its whole evolution (persistence). When the rewrite depends only on behaviour, preservation is a behavioural property and Rice's theorem applies. When the rewrite reads the code, preservation is no longer behavioural; yet, under a uniform disruption condition, the s-m-n reduction that proves Rice's theorem works inside a single class of behaviourally identical programs, and preservation inherits the degree of the halting problem. One step never exceeds the degree of the property, while persistence can climb one level of the arithmetical hierarchy. We then isolate the mechanism shared by rewriting, supervision and system comparison, the elevation operator, and prove a normal form: the preserving set is determined by a single finite trigger and a polarity, and the Rice-Shapiro theorem restricts the polarity to the arithmetical class of the property. Runtime monitors, consistency supervision, conformance to a reference and observational equivalence are instances, and no sound theory covers the preserving systems.
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2609.11326 · 10 Sep · v3: journal version. Shortened; neutral terminology; new Proposition 7.12 showing that the class of elevation operators is complete for anchored normal forms; comparison with enforcement by program rewriting (Hamlen, Morrisett and Schneider) added; illustrations moved to an appendix. 35 pages. Companion paper: arXiv:2606.28639 (applied consequences)

Logic in Computer Science

A Four-Valued Graph Model for Conflict Resolution: Core Framework and a Machine-Checked Formalization in Lean 4

This note consolidates the core of the Quasi-Closed World Graph Model for Conflict Resolution (QCW-GMCR), which extends the standard Graph Model for Conflict Resolution with Belnap's four-valued logic to represent option-level epistemic ambiguity, and pairs the framework with a machine-checked Lean 4 formalization. QCW-GMCR combines: (1) FOUR-valued option assignments with compositional propagation to state-level feasibility; (2) graded reachability (definite, credible, possible) based on an FDE-inspired transition-warrant semantics, with definite reachability related to FDE consequence in the Boolean fragment; (3) axiomatized deterministic reductions from four-valued assessments to binary decisions, including four canonical operators reflecting distinct risk attitudes; and (4) catastrophe-avoiding equilibrium concepts with a quasi-closed-world safety invariant. A four-valued hypergame extension captures heterogeneous subjective assessments across decision makers. We state the core definitions and results and report the parts verified in Lean 4 with mathlib, including the classical GMCR stability hierarchy, algebraic and compositional properties of FOUR-valued conjunction, properties of the canonical reductions, and the graded reachability hierarchy. The formalization also helped identify and correct earlier claims, including a knowledge-monotonicity axiom replaced by truth monotonicity. This preprint provides a stable, citable record of the framework and its current formal verification status.
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Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.SE

SaltBench: A Referee-Gated Protocol for Measuring Method Effects in Machine-Checked Software Work

SaltBench asks how a machine referee (a proof kernel, program verifier or withheld test suite) changes how a coding agent works. Outcomes are decided outside the agent's toolchain; a wall probed before any scored run isolates the agent from the network, reference solutions and harness; a dated freeze of predictions authorizes each run; a budget stop is a halt, never a failure. Five Rust systems components on a pinned Verus toolchain are each refereed by a withheld test suite. The arms: plain; salt-diet, also instructed to specify and verify its code (a registered reduced rendering of the method); and two arms handed the specification a priori, where the registered sign test at k=4 reached no verdict (3 of 4, p = 0.3125). salt-diet cost more on all five components, by a practical margin: no premium exceeded 2.8879x under either reading of the declared set and the three cheapest sat below 1.4x, a bound of this population and not a promise about larger ones: the premium is near 1 on the smallest components and rises with size. Versions 2 and 3 add the complete pilot matrix: 200 conditions over four models, 181 with a result of record, 16 inexpressible and 3 declared unreached at the cost cap, costed in tokens, dollars and wall time, with no verdict on the arms. Version 3 adds a correctness reading, declared post hoc and registered after every verdict it reads existed and many had been read by its author: 447 cells pass the withheld suite, 40 fail, 10 are censored at a registered budget, 4 are unscorable and 42 are read by condition. salt-diet's pass-rate interval lies wholly below plain's on 8 greenfield and 5 brownfield rows and wholly above it on 2 greenfield rows. It is descriptive, over three cells of record per condition, with no test, and says nothing about whether the method makes code more or less correct. The full record is public.
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Wednesday 9 September

Logic in Computer Science

A Formal Framework for Noisy Runtime Verification

We introduce the logic EDMon—an epistemic dynamic logic meant to model monitorability concepts in noisy runtime verification. Its syntax and semantics are defined and explained and the connection between EDMon and monitorability and noisy runtime verification concepts is explored. We then demonstrate that EDMon is sufficient to capture many of the results in the noisy runtime verification literature and catalog its relation to nearby logics and describe a large class of its theorems.
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Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from math.LO

Compact totally separated types

Perhaps surprisingly, there are infinite types that can be exhaustively searched mechanically in finite time. We use ideas from topology to build plenty of them, referring to searchable types as compact types, and we use ordinals to measure their logical complexity. We consider two systems of ordinal notations under which a single notation denotes both a discrete ordinal and a compact one, with an embedding of the former into the latter whose image has empty complement. A boolean valued function decides which points in the image of the embedding are isolated and which are topological limit points. The first system consists of the traditional Brouwer codes and the second is an inductive-recursive universe generalizing them. The discrete ordinals so obtained are trichotomous, and the compact ones have the least element property for complemented subsets, but these two desirable properties cannot be fulfilled simultaneously in a constructive setting. The ordinals obtained from Brouwer codes further enjoy a boolean Leibniz principle, which has the notion of total separatedness as its topological counterpart. This extends previous work from Gödel's system T to intensional Martin-Löf type theory with univalent universes, and is formalized in Agda in the TypeTopology repository.
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Logic in Computer Science · Cross-listed from cs.AR

CertiFlash: A Formal Verification Framework for Flash Translation Layers in Computational Solid State Drives

Data-intensive applications move large amounts of data from storage to the compute unit, incurring significant data movement overhead. Storage-centric computing reduces this overhead by moving computation near or inside solid-state drives (SSDs). Enabling it requires modifying SSD policies, e.g., address translation and garbage collection, which are part of the Flash Translation Layer (FTL), the SSD's firmware. Modifying the FTL is error-prone. Because FTL logic has direct access to security-critical device components, even a functionally correct FTL can leak data between tenants, drop integrity tags, or assign a flash block to the wrong tenant. We show that a faulty FTL can corrupt the device state at five surfaces inside the SSD, and demonstrate them on a DaisyPlus OpenSSD. Prior work verifies individual FTL designs, but has two limitations. (1) It establishes only functional correctness, so a modified FTL can violate isolation, integrity, and ownership and still pass verification. (2) It is tied to a single FTL design, so every modification requires redoing every proof. We propose CertiFlash, a formal verification framework for FTLs, mechanized in the Rocq proof assistant, that gives designers a machine-checked proof of security and correctness. CertiFlash models an FTL as a deterministic state machine with a single global invariant over mapping, isolation, integrity, ownership, and allocation. We prove once, over a general FTL model, that (i) every FTL operation preserves the invariant and (ii) the model refines an idealized block device. For a new design, a designer discharges five hypotheses about its own operations instead of redoing either proof. Across four case studies, a designer adds 27 to 3,231 lines against a 16,489-line framework, significantly reducing the verification effort. CertiFlash is open source.
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All authors Harshita Gupta, Mayank Kabra, Rakesh Nadig, Nika Mansouri Ghiasi, Sahand Divsalar, F. Nisa Bostanci, Ataberk Olgun, Konstantinos Kanellopoulos, Jisung Park, Haiyu Mao, Abdullah Giray Yaglikci, Mohammad Sadrosadati, Onur Mutlu

Logic in Computer Science

Policy Change for Treelike Monitors

We study the policy change problem that arises in the runtime verification of long-running systems. The online monitors typically used in this context are generally treelike, in that they maintain substates that monitor subformulae of the target policy. We consider when and how the policy can be changed while the monitored system is running by only exploiting the information stored in the monitor's state. This is relevant, for example, to account for new system functionality or changes in regulatory requirements. We formally define the policy change problem in a general setting, independent of any specific (treelike) monitor implementation. We then show that policy change for past-time metric temporal logic (pMTL) is decidable but has tight non-primitive recursive lower and upper bounds, while with discrete-time semantics it is EXPSPACE-complete.
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