Completeness for μ-calculi: A coalgebraic approach

We set up a generic framework for proving completeness results for variants of the modal mu-calculus, using tools from coalgebraic modal logic. We illustrate the method by proving two new completeness results: for the graded mu-calculus (which is equivalent to monadic second-order logic on the class of unranked tree models), and for the monotone modal mu-calculus.

Besides these main applications, our result covers the Kozen–Walukiewicz completeness theorem for the standard modal mu-calculus, as well as the linear-time mu-calculus and modal fixpoint logics on ranked trees. Completeness of the linear-time mu-calculus is known, but the proof we obtain here is different and places the result under a common roof with Walukiewicz' result.

Our approach combines insights from the theory of automata operating on potentially infinite objects, with methods from the categorical framework of coalgebra as a general theory of state-based evolving systems. At the interface of these theories lies the notion of a coalgebraic modal one-step language. One of our main contributions here is the introduction of the novel concept of a disjunctive basis for a modal one-step language. Generalizing earlier work, our main general result states that in case a coalgebraic modal logic admits such a disjunctive basis, then soundness and completeness at the one-step level transfer to the level of the full coalgebraic modal mu-calculus.