The Quantitative Linear-Time-Branching-Time Spectrum

Abstract

We present a distance-agnostic approach to quantitative verification. Taking as input an unspecified distance on system traces, or executions, we develop a game-based framework which allows us to define a spectrum of different interesting system distances corresponding to the given trace distance. Thus we extend the classic linear-time--branching-time spectrum to a quantitative setting, parametrized by trace distance. We also provide fixed-point characterizations of all system distances, and we prove a general transfer principle which allows us to transfer counterexamples from the qualitative to the quantitative setting,showing that all system distances are mutually topologically inequivalent.