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Duality in Formal Languages and Logic - a unifying approach to complexity and semantics

Project description

Dualities between algebraic and topological structure shed light on formal languages and logic

Dualities are like two diverse ways of looking at the same thing. Many dualities between algebraic and topological structures exist and flipping back and forth between the two ‘views’ has been the source of many breakthroughs in mathematics. The ERC-funded DuaLL project will use these dualities as a tool to advance topics in theoretical computer science. The team will focus on the search for robust extensions of the theory of regular languages and the development of duality theoretic methods for logics with categorical semantics. They will harness tools from Stone duality, including the Jonsson-Tarski canonical extensions and profinite algebra, and from universal algebra and category theory.

Objective

Dualities between algebraic and topological structure are pervasive in mathematics, and toggling back and forth between them has often been associated with important breakthroughs. The main objective of this project is to bring this important tool to bear on a number of subjects in theoretical computer science thereby advancing, systematising, and unifying them.

One subject of focus is the search for robust extensions of the theory of regular languages. A powerful technical tool for classifying regular languages and proving decidability results is Eilenberg-Reiterman theory, which assigns classes of finite monoids or single profinite algebras to classes of languages. Recent results by the PI and her co-authors show that the theory may be seen as a special case of Stone duality for Boolean algebras with operators. We want to:
- Develop an Eilenberg-Reiterman theory beyond regular languages with the goal of obtaining new tools and separation results for Boolean circuit classes, an active area in the search for lower bounds in complexity theory.
-Systematise and advance the search for robust generalisations of regularity to other structures such as infinite words, finite and infinite trees, cost functions, and words with data.

The second subject of focus is the development of duality theoretic methods for logics with categorical semantics. We want to approach the problem incrementally:
- View duality for categorical semantics through a spectrum of intermediate cases going from regular languages over varying alphabets, Ghilardi-Zawadowski duality for finitely presented Heyting algebras, and the Bodirsky-Pinsker topological Birkhoff theorem to Makkai's, Awodey and Forssell's, and Coumans' recent work on first-order logic duality, thus unifying topics in semantics and formal languages.

Our main tools come from Stone duality in various forms including the Jonsson-Tarski canonical extensions and profinite algebra, and from universal algebra and category theory.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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ERC-ADG - Advanced Grant

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2014-ADG

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Host institution

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 2 348 938,00
Address
RUE MICHEL ANGE 3
75794 Paris
France

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Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Hauts-de-Seine
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Research Organisations
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 2 348 938,00

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