Investigating The Algebraic Structure of Dihomotopy Types

Philippe Gaucher

Published 2001-05-07, updated 2001-07-25Version 4

This presentation is the sequel of a paper published in GETCO'00 proceedings where a research program to construct an appropriate algebraic setting for the study of deformations of higher dimensional automata was sketched. This paper focuses precisely on detailing some of its aspects. The main idea is that the category of homotopy types can be embedded in a new category of dihomotopy types, the embedding being realized by the Globe functor. In this latter category, isomorphism classes of objects are exactly higher dimensional automata up to deformations leaving invariant their computer scientific properties as presence or not of deadlocks (or everything similar or related). Some hints to study the algebraic structure of dihomotopy types are given, in particular a rule to decide whether a statement/notion concerning dihomotopy types is or not the lifting of another statement/notion concerning homotopy types. This rule does not enable to guess what is the lifting of a given notion/statement, it only enables to make the verification, once the lifting has been found.