Second Order Isomorphic Types: A Proof Theoretic Study on Second Order lambda-Calculus with Surjective Paring and Terminal Object

We investigate invertible terms and isomorphic types in the second order lambda calculus extended with surjective pairs and terminal (or Unit) type. These two topics are closely related: on one side, the study of invertibility is a necessary tool for the characterization of isomorphic types; on the other hand, we need the notion of isomorphic types to study the typed invertible terms. The result of our investigation is twofold: we give a constructive characterization of the invertible terms, extending previous work by Dezani and Bruce-Longo, and a decidable equational theory of the isomorphisms of types which hold in all models of the calculus, which is a conservative extension to the second order case of the results previously achieved for the case of first order typed calculi. Via the Curry-Howard correspondence, this work also provides a decision procedure for strong equivalence of formulae in second order intuitionistic positive propositional logic, that is suitable to search equivalent proofs in automated deduction systems.