Probabilistic Bisimulation: Naturally on Distributions
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | CONCUR 2014 - Concurrency Theory - 25th International Conference |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44584-6_18 |
| Field | Informatics |
| Keywords | stochastic systems; probability; bisimulation; non-determinism; process algebra; coalgebra |
| Description | In contrast to the usual understanding of probabilistic systems as stochastic processes, recently these systems have also been regarded as transformers of probabilities. In this paper, we give a natural definition of strong bisimulation for probabilistic systems corresponding to this view that treats probability distributions as first-class citizens. Our definition applies in the same way to discrete systems as well as to systems with uncountable state and action spaces. Several examples demonstrate that our definition re- fines the understanding of behavioural equivalences of probabilistic systems. In particular, it solves a longstanding open problem concerning the representation of memoryless continuous time by memoryfull continuous time. Finally, we give algorithms for computing this bisimulation not only for finite but also for classes of uncountably infinite systems. |
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