Tropological systems are points of quantales (Q1612161)

From MaRDI portal
scientific article
Language Label Description Also known as
English
Tropological systems are points of quantales
scientific article

    Statements

    Tropological systems are points of quantales (English)
    0 references
    0 references
    22 August 2002
    0 references
    Quantales are partially ordered algebraic structures that appear in many different contexts and have a wealth of applications [see the reviewer's book, Quantales and their applications. Pitman Research Notes, Vol. 234. Harlow: Longman Scientific and Technical (1990; Zbl 0703.06007)]. One of the most studied application is the study of the spectrum of a \(C^*\)-algebra, viewing idempotent quantales as a noncommutative version of frames. Much work has been done on this by Mulvey, Wick-Pelletier, Borceux, Rosicky and others. The article under review uses this particular application as motivation for applying quantales to the theory of concurrency in computer science. This particular use of quantales goes back to the work of \textit{S. Abramsky} and \textit{S. Vickers} [``Quantales, observational logic and process semantics'', Math. Struct. Comput. Sci. 3, 161-227 (1993; Zbl 0823.06011)]. The first section of the paper goes through some basic definitions including that of tropological system, which forms the foundation of the paper. At the heart of this definition is a unital quantale \(Q\) together with a left \(Q\)-module \(L\). It generalizes the notion of topological system introduced by \textit{S. Vickers} in his book, Topology via logic [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press (1989; Zbl 0668.54001); Paperback ed. (1996; Zbl 0922.54002)]. The main idea is to obtain from the pair \((Q,L)\) another quantale, which can be thought of as the spectrum, in analogy with the \(C^*\)-algebra case. A good part of the beginning of the paper develops relevant background on the theory of quantales, including involutive quantales, points, nuclei, quotients and modules. The author does a good job of making the paper readable to anyone not necessarily all that familiar with quantales. The heart of the paper then develops the main results about tropological models, systems and points. There is a useful discussion comparing the author's approach to that of recent work of Mulvey and Pelletier and the article concludes with a look at the role played by factor quantales. These are quantales where the only two-sided elements are the bottom and the top elements.
    0 references
    points of quantales
    0 references
    quantales
    0 references
    concurrency
    0 references
    tropological system
    0 references
    spectrum
    0 references
    nuclei
    0 references
    factor quantales
    0 references

    Identifiers

    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references
    0 references