arXiv subjects

Luca Reggio

Publications and source records attributed to Luca Reggio.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Beth companions of finitary essentially algebraic theories

For categories, being balanced (meaning that every arrow that is both epic and monic is an isomorphism) can be regarded as a strong tameness property which plays an important role, for example, in algebra and logic. We study the problem of associating a balanced companion category, called \emph{Beth companion}, to a locally finitely presentable category (equivalently, the category of models of a finitary essentially algebraic theory). We show that, if it exists, the Beth companion is unique and can be described in terms of \emph{saturated} objects. Under some additional assumptions, we prove that Beth companions can be computed as orthogonality classes, and admit a syntactic presentation via Gabriel--Ulmer duality. Finally, we establish conditions for the transfer of properties, ensuring, for instance, that if the original category is equivalent to a (quasi)variety, its Beth companion is too.

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arXiv2026

On the Axioms of Arboreal Categories

Arboreal categories were introduced as an axiomatic framework for game comonads, which provide a comonadic view on many model-comparison games in logic. We demonstrate the inadequacy of the axiom stating that paths are connected. We then propose the notion of ``tree-connectedness'' to address this deficiency, and show that all the essential properties of arboreal categories that we are aware of remain valid under this new definition. Furthermore, we show that the path functor is a Street fibration.

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arXiv2025

Poset-enriched pretoposes and compact ordered spaces

We provide a characterisation of the category $\mathsf{KOrd}$ of Nachbin's compact ordered spaces as a poset-enriched category. Up to equivalence, $\mathsf{KOrd}$ is the only non-degenerate poset-enriched pretopos whose terminal object is a (discrete) generator and in which every object is covered by an order-filtral object. Order-filtral objects satisfy an appropriate form of compactness and separation. Throughout, we make extensive use of the internal language of poset-enriched pretoposes.

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arXiv2025

Existential and positive games: a comonadic and axiomatic view

A number of model-comparison games central to (finite) model theory, such as pebble and Ehrenfeucht-Fra\"{i}ss\'{e} games, can be captured as comonads on categories of relational structures. In particular, the coalgebras for these comonads encode in a syntax-free way preservation of resource-indexed logic fragments, such as first-order logic with bounded quantifier rank or a finite number of variables. In this paper, we extend this approach to existential and positive fragments (i.e., without universal quantifiers and without negations, respectively) of first-order and modal logic. We show, both concretely and at the axiomatic level of arboreal categories, that the preservation of existential fragments is characterised by the existence of so-called pathwise embeddings, while positive fragments are captured by a newly introduced notion of positive bisimulation. As an application, we offer a new proof of an equi-resource Lyndon positivity theorem for (multi)modal logic.

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arXiv2024

An invitation to game comonads

Game comonads offer a categorical view of a number of model-comparison games central to model theory, such as pebble and Ehrenfeucht-Fra\"iss\'e games. Remarkably, the categories of coalgebras for these comonads capture preservation of several fragments of resource-bounded logics, such as (infinitary) first-order logic with n variables or bounded quantifier rank, and corresponding combinatorial parameters such as tree-width and tree-depth. In this way, game comonads provide a new bridge between categorical methods developed for semantics, and the combinatorial and algorithmic methods of resource-sensitive model theory. We give an overview of this framework and outline some of its applications, including the study of homomorphism counting results in finite model theory, and of equi-resource homomorphism preservation theorems in logic using the axiomatic setting of arboreal categories. Finally, we describe some homotopical ideas that arise naturally in the context of game comonads.

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arXiv2023

A model category for modal logic

We define Quillen model structures on a family of presheaf toposes arising from tree unravellings of Kripke models, leading to a homotopy theory for modal logic. Modal preservation theorems and the Hennessy-Milner property are revisited from a homotopical perspective.

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arXiv2023

Filtral pretoposes and compact Hausdorff locales

The category of compact Hausdorff locales is a pretopos which is filtral, meaning that every object is covered by one whose subobject lattice is isomorphic to the lattice of filters of complemented elements. We show that any filtral pretopos satisfying some mild additional conditions can be embedded into the category of compact Hausdorff locales. This result is valid in the internal logic of any topos. Assuming the principle of weak excluded middle and the existence of copowers of the terminal object in the pretopos, the image of the embedding contains all spatial compact Hausdorff locales. The notion of filtrality was introduced by V. Marra and L. Reggio (Theory Appl. Categ., 2020) to characterise the category of compact Hausdorff spaces within the class of pretoposes. Our results can be regarded as a constructive extension of the aforementioned characterisation, avoiding reference to points. If the ambient logic is classical, i.e. it satisfies excluded middle, and the prime ideal theorem for Boolean algebras holds, we obtain as a corollary the characterisation of compact Hausdorff spaces in op. cit.

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arXiv2023

Finitely accessible arboreal adjunctions and Hintikka formulae

Arboreal categories provide an axiomatic framework in which abstract notions of bisimilarity and back-and-forth games can be defined. They act on extensional categories, typically consisting of relational structures, via arboreal adjunctions. In many cases, equivalence of structures in fragments of infinitary first-order logic can be captured by transferring the bisimilarity relation along the adjunction. In most applications, the categories involved are locally finitely presentable and the adjunctions are finitely accessible. Our main result identifies the expressive power of this class of adjunctions. We show that the ranks of back-and-forth games in the arboreal category are definable by formulae \`a la Hintikka, and thus the relation between extensional objects induced by bisimilarity is always coarser than equivalence in infinitary first-order logic. Our approach leverages Gabriel-Ulmer duality for locally finitely presentable categories, and Hodges' word-constructions.

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arXiv2022

Arboreal Categories and Equi-resource Homomorphism Preservation Theorems

The classical homomorphism preservation theorem, due to {\L}o\'s, Lyndon and Tarski, states that a first-order sentence $\phi$ is preserved under homomorphisms between structures if, and only if, it is equivalent to an existential positive sentence $\psi$. Given a notion of (syntactic) complexity of sentences, an "equi-resource" homomorphism preservation theorem improves on the classical result by ensuring that $\psi$ can be chosen so that its complexity does not exceed that of $\phi$. We describe an axiomatic approach to equi-resource homomorphism preservation theorems based on the notion of arboreal category. This framework is then employed to establish novel homomorphism preservation results, and improve on known ones, for various logic fragments, including first-order, guarded and modal logics.

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arXiv2022

Barr-Exact Categories and Soft Sheaf Representations

It has long been known that a key ingredient for a sheaf representation of a universal algebra A consists in a distributive lattice of commuting congruences on A. The sheaf representations of universal algebras (over stably compact spaces) that arise in this manner have been recently characterised by Gehrke and van Gool (J. Pure Appl. Algebra, 2018), who identified the central role of the notion of softness. In this paper, we extend the scope of this theory by replacing varieties of algebras with Barr-exact categories, thus encompassing a number of "non-algebraic" examples. Our approach is based on the notion of K-sheaf: intuitively, whereas sheaves are defined on open subsets, K-sheaves are defined on compact ones. Throughout, we consider sheaves on complete lattices rather than spaces; this allows us to obtain point-free versions of sheaf representations whereby spaces are replaced with frames. These results are used to construct sheaf representations for the dual of the category of compact ordered spaces, and to recover Banaschewski and Vermeulen's point-free sheaf representation of commutative Gelfand rings (Quaest. Math., 2011).

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arXiv2022

Model completions for universal classes of algebras: necessary and sufficient conditions

Necessary and sufficient conditions are presented for the (first-order) theory of a universal class of algebraic structures (algebras) to admit a model completion, extending a characterization provided by Wheeler. For varieties of algebras that have equationally definable principal congruences and the compact intersection property, these conditions yield a more elegant characterization obtained (in a slightly more restricted setting) by Ghilardi and Zawadowski. Moreover, it is shown that under certain further assumptions on congruence lattices, the existence of a model completion implies that the variety has equationally definable principal congruences. This result is then used to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a model completion for theories of Hamiltonian varieties of pointed residuated lattices, a broad family of varieties that includes lattice-ordered abelian groups and MV-algebras. Notably, if the theory of a Hamiltonian variety of pointed residuated lattices admits a model completion, it must have equationally definable principal congruences. In particular, the theories of lattice-ordered abelian groups and MV-algebras do not have a model completion, as first proved by Glass and Pierce, and Lacava, respectively. Finally, it is shown that certain varieties of pointed residuated lattices generated by their linearly ordered members, including lattice-ordered abelian groups and MV-algebras, can be extended with a binary operation in order to obtain theories that do have a model completion.

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arXiv2021

Polyadic Sets and Homomorphism Counting

A classical result due to Lovasz (1967) shows that the isomorphism type of a graph is determined by homomorphism counts. That is, graphs G and H are isomorphic whenever the number of homomorphisms from K to G is the same as the number of homomorphisms from K to H for all graphs K. Variants of this result, for various classes of finite structures, have been exploited in a wide range of research fields, including graph theory and finite model theory. We provide a categorical approach to homomorphism counting based on the concept of polyadic (finite) set. The latter is a special case of the notion of polyadic space introduced by Joyal (1971) and related, via duality, to Boolean hyperdoctrines in categorical logic. We also obtain new homomorphism counting results applicable to a number of infinite structures, such as finitely branching trees and profinite algebras.

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arXiv2021

Lov\'asz-Type Theorems and Game Comonads

Lov\'asz (1967) showed that two finite relational structures A and B are isomorphic if, and only if, the number of homomorphisms from C to A is the same as the number of homomorphisms from C to B for any finite structure C. Soon after, Pultr (1973) proved a categorical generalisation of this fact. We propose a new categorical formulation, which applies to any locally finite category with pushouts and a proper factorisation system. As special cases of this general theorem, we obtain two variants of Lov\'asz' theorem: the result by Dvo\v{r}\'ak (2010) that characterises equivalence of graphs in the k-dimensional Weisfeiler-Leman equivalence by homomorphism counts from graphs of tree-width at most k, and the result of Grohe (2020) characterising equivalence with respect to first-order logic with counting and quantifier depth k in terms of homomorphism counts from graphs of tree-depth at most k. The connection of our categorical formulation with these results is obtained by means of the game comonads of Abramsky et al. We also present a novel application to homomorphism counts in modal logic.

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arXiv2021

Beth definability and the Stone-Weierstrass Theorem

The Stone-Weierstrass Theorem for compact Hausdorff spaces is a basic result of functional analysis with far-reaching consequences. We introduce an equational logic $\vDash_Δ$ associated with an infinitary variety $Δ$ and show that the Stone-Weierstrass Theorem is a consequence of the Beth definability property of $\vDash_Δ$, stating that every implicit definition can be made explicit. Further, we define an infinitary propositional logic $\vdash_Δ$ by means of a Hilbert-style calculus and prove a strong completeness result whereby the semantic notion of consequence associated with $\vdash_Δ$ coincides with $\vDash_Δ$.

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arXiv2021

Arboreal Categories: An Axiomatic Theory of Resources

Game comonads provide a categorical syntax-free approach to finite model theory, and their Eilenberg-Moore coalgebras typically encode important combinatorial parameters of structures. In this paper, we develop a framework whereby the essential properties of these categories of coalgebras are captured in a purely axiomatic fashion. To this end, we introduce arboreal categories, which have an intrinsic process structure, allowing dynamic notions such as bisimulation and back-and-forth games, and resource notions such as number of rounds of a game, to be defined. These are related to extensional or "static" structures via arboreal covers, which are resource-indexed comonadic adjunctions. These ideas are developed in a general, axiomatic setting, and applied to relational structures, where the comonadic constructions for pebbling, Ehrenfeucht-Fra\"iss\'e and modal bisimulation games recently introduced by Abramsky et al. are recovered, showing that many of the fundamental notions of finite model theory and descriptive complexity arise from instances of arboreal covers.

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arXiv2020

A duality theoretic view on limits of finite structures: Extended version

A systematic theory of structural limits for finite models has been developed by Nesetril and Ossona de Mendez. It is based on the insight that the collection of finite structures can be embedded, via a map they call the Stone pairing, in a space of measures, where the desired limits can be computed. We show that a closely related but finer grained space of (finitely additive) measures arises -- via Stone-Priestley duality and the notion of types from model theory -- by enriching the expressive power of first-order logic with certain "probabilistic operators". We provide a sound and complete calculus for this extended logic and expose the functorial nature of this construction. The consequences are two-fold. On the one hand, we identify the logical gist of the theory of structural limits. On the other hand, our construction shows that the duality theoretic variant of the Stone pairing captures the adding of a layer of quantifiers, thus making a strong link to recent work on semiring quantifiers in logic on words. In the process, we identify the model theoretic notion of types as the unifying concept behind this link. These results contribute to bridging the strands of logic in computer science which focus on semantics and on more algorithmic and complexity related areas, respectively.

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arXiv2020

A characterisation of the category of compact Hausdorff spaces

We provide a characterisation of the category KH of compact Hausdorff spaces and continuous maps by means of categorical properties only. To this aim we introduce a notion of filtrality for coherent categories, relating certain lattices of subobjects to their Boolean centers. Our main result reads as follows: Up to equivalence, KH is the unique non-trivial well-pointed pretopos which is filtral and admits all set-indexed copowers of its terminal object.

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arXiv2020

On the axiomatisability of the dual of compact ordered spaces

We provide a direct and elementary proof of the fact that the category of Nachbin's compact ordered spaces is dually equivalent to an Aleph_1-ary variety of algebras. Further, we show that Aleph_1 is a sharp bound: compact ordered spaces are not dually equivalent to any SP-class of finitary algebras.

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