English

Normalizing the Taylor expansion of non-deterministic {\lambda}-terms, via parallel reduction of resource vectors

Logic in Computer Science 2023-06-22 v6

Abstract

It has been known since Ehrhard and Regnier's seminal work on the Taylor expansion of λ\lambda-terms that this operation commutes with normalization: the expansion of a λ\lambda-term is always normalizable and its normal form is the expansion of the B\"ohm tree of the term. We generalize this result to the non-uniform setting of the algebraic λ\lambda-calculus, i.e. λ\lambda-calculus extended with linear combinations of terms. This requires us to tackle two difficulties: foremost is the fact that Ehrhard and Regnier's techniques rely heavily on the uniform, deterministic nature of the ordinary λ\lambda-calculus, and thus cannot be adapted; second is the absence of any satisfactory generic extension of the notion of B\"ohm tree in presence of quantitative non-determinism, which is reflected by the fact that the Taylor expansion of an algebraic λ\lambda-term is not always normalizable. Our solution is to provide a fine grained study of the dynamics of β\beta-reduction under Taylor expansion, by introducing a notion of reduction on resource vectors, i.e. infinite linear combinations of resource λ\lambda-terms. The latter form the multilinear fragment of the differential λ\lambda-calculus, and resource vectors are the target of the Taylor expansion of λ\lambda-terms. We show the reduction of resource vectors contains the image of any β\beta-reduction step, from which we deduce that Taylor expansion and normalization commute on the nose. We moreover identify a class of algebraic λ\lambda-terms, encompassing both normalizable algebraic λ\lambda-terms and arbitrary ordinary λ\lambda-terms: the expansion of these is always normalizable, which guides the definition of a generalization of B\"ohm trees to this setting.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1706.04700,
  title  = {Normalizing the Taylor expansion of non-deterministic {\lambda}-terms, via parallel reduction of resource vectors},
  author = {Lionel Vaux},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.04700},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:19:17.703Z