In a recent paper, Girard proposes to use his recent construction of a geometry of interaction in the hyperfinite factor in an innovative way to characterize complexity classes. We begin by giving a detailed explanation of both the choices and the motivations of Girard's definitions. We then provide a complete proof that the complexity class co-NL can be characterized using this new approach. We introduce as a technical tool the non-deterministic pointer machine, a concrete model to computes algorithms.Comment: To appear in Mathematical Structures in Computer Scienc

Contextual equivalence equate terms that have the same observable behaviour in any context. A standard contextual equivalence for CCS is the strong barbed congruence. Configuration structures are a denotational semantics for processes in which one define equivalences that are more discriminating, i.e. that distinguish the denotation of terms equated by barbed congruence. Hereditary history preserving bisimulation (HHPB) is such a relation. We define a strong backand-forth barbed congruence on RCCS, a reversible variant of CCS. We show that the relation induced by the back-and-forth congruence on configuration structures is equivalent to HHPB, thus providing a contextual characterization of HHPB.

In a recent work, Girard [1] proposed a new and innovative approach to computational complexity based on the proofs-as-programs correspondence. In a previous paper [2], the authors showed how Girard's proposal succeeds in obtaining a new characterization of co-NL languages as a set of operators acting on a Hilbert Space. In this paper, we extend this work by showing that it is also possible to define a set of operators characterizing the class L of logarithmic space languages.

Abstract. We present an algebraic view on logic programming, related to proof theory and more specifically linear logic and geometry of interaction. Within this construction, a characterization of logspace (deterministic and non-deterministic) computation is given via a synctactic restriction, using an encoding of words that derives from proof theory. We show that the acceptance of a word by an observation (the counterpart of a program in the encoding) can be decided within logarithmic space, by reducing this problem to the acyclicity of a graph. We show moreover that observations are as expressive as two-ways multi-heads finite automata, a kind of pointer machines that is a standard model of logarithmic space computation.