Coherent differentiation
Thomas Ehrhard · Mathematical Structures in Computer Science · 2023
Abstract The categorical models of differential linear logic (LL) are additive categories and those of the differential lambda-calculus are left-additive categories because of the Leibniz rule which requires the summation of two expressions. This means that, as far as the differential lambda-calculus and differential LL are concerned, these models feature finite nondeterminism and indeed these languages are essentially non-deterministic. We introduce a categorical framework for differentiation which does not require additivity and is compatible with deterministic models such as coherence spaces and probabilistic models such as probabilistic coherence spaces.