Bisimilarity of diagrams

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate diagrams, namely functors from any small category to a fixed category, and more particularly, their bisimilarity. Initially defined using the theory of open maps of Joyal et al., we prove several equivalent characterizations: it is equivalent to the existence of a relation, similar to history-preserving bisimulations for event structures and it has a logical characterization similar to the Hennessy-Milner theorem. We then prove that we capture many different known bismilarities, by considering the category of executions and extensions of executions, and by forming the functor that maps every execution to the information of interest for the problem at hand. We then look at the particular case of finitary diagrams with values in real or rational vector spaces. We prove that checking bisimilarity and satisfiability of a positive formula by a diagram are both decidable by reducing to a problem of existence of invertible matrices with linear conditions, which in turn reduces to the existential theory of the reals.