The temporal logic of coalgebras via Galois algebras

Abstract

This paper introduces a temporal logic for coalgebras. Nexttime and lasttime operators are defined for a coalgebra, acting on predicates on the state space. They give rise to what is called a Galois algebra. Galois algebras form models of temporal logics like Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) and Computation Tree Logic (CTL). The mapping from coalgebras to Galois algebras turns out to be functorial, yielding indexed categorical structures. This construction gives many examples, for coalgebras of polynomial functors on sets. More generally, it will be shown how ‘fuzzy’ predicates on metric spaces, and predicates on presheaves, yield indexed Galois algebras, in basically the same coalgebraic manner.