English

Visualising CTL Witnesses and Counterexamples -- Extended Version

Logic in Computer Science 2026-04-23 v1 Formal Languages and Automata Theory

Abstract

One of the advantages of LTL over CTL is that the notion of a counterexample is easy to grasp, visualise and process: it is a trace that violates the property at hand. In this paper we propose a notion of evidence for CTL properties on explicit-state models -- which equally serves as witness for satisfied properties and counterexample for violated ones -- and how to visualise it, with the main aim of (human) comprehension. The main contribution consists of a formal model of evidence, a characterisation of minimal evidence per temporal operator, and a concrete, implemented proposal for its visualisation. This is the extended version of a paper published in SPIN 2026, containing the proofs of all results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.20253,
  title  = {Visualising CTL Witnesses and Counterexamples -- Extended Version},
  author = {Arend Rensink},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.20253},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

for associated software artefact, see https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19169335

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:29:52.654Z