Encoding Peano Arithmetic in a Minimal Fragment of Separation Logic
This work addresses foundational issues in software verification for heap-manipulating programs, showing that complex arithmetic properties can be encoded in a simple logic, though it is incremental in extending separation logic theory.
The paper tackles the problem of verifying properties in separation logic with numbers by translating Pi-0-1 formulas from Peano arithmetic into a minimal fragment, proving equivalence in validity and implying undecidability for this fragment.
Separation logic is successful for software verification of heap-manipulating programs. Numbers are necessary to be added to separation logic for verification of practical software where numbers are important. However, properties of the validity such as decidability and complexity for separation logic with numbers have not been fully studied yet. This paper presents the translation of Pi-0-1 formulas in Peano arithmetic to formulas in a small fragment of separation logic with numbers, which consists only of the intuitionistic points-to predicate, 0 and the successor function. Then this paper proves that a formula in Peano arithmetic is valid in the standard model if and only if its translation in this fragment is valid in the standard interpretation. As a corollary, this paper also gives a perspective proof for the undecidability of the validity in this fragment. Since Pi-0-1 formulas can describe consistency of logical systems and non-termination of computations, this result also shows that these properties discussed in Peano arithmetic can also be discussed in such a small fragment of separation logic with numbers.