A Modal Logic for Message passing Processes (Extended Abstract)

A first-order modal logic is given for describing properties of processes which may send and receive values or messages along communication ports. We give two methods for proving that a process enjoys such a property. The first is the construction, for each process P and formula F, of a characteristic formula P sat F such that P enjoys the property F if and only if the formula P sat F is logically equivalent to tt. The second is a sound and complete proof system whose judgements take the form B ⊢ P∶F, meaning: under the assumption B the process P enjoys the property F. The notion of symbolic operational semantics plays a crucial role in the design of both the characteristic formulae and the proof system.