Abstract Rewriting and 1-Dimensional Polygraphs
Dimitri Ara, Albert Burroni, Yves Guiraud, Philippe Malbos, François Métayer, Samuel Mimram · Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2025
This chapter discusses 1-polygraphs, which are simply directed graphs, thought of here as abstract rewriting systems: they consist of vertices, which represent the objects of interest, and arrows, which indicate that one object can be rewritten into another. After formally introducing those, it will be shown that they provide a notion of presentation for sets, by generators and relations. Of course presentations of sets are of little interest in themselves, but merely used here as a gentle introduction to some of the main concepts discussed in this work: in particular, the notion of Tietze transformations is introduced, which generates the equivalence between two presentations of the same set. In this context, an important question consists in deciding when two objects are equivalent, i.e., represent the same element of the presented set. In order to address it, the theory of abstract rewriting systems is developed.