We introduce explicit fusions of names. An explicit fusion is a process that exists concurrently with the rest of the system, and enables two names to be used interchangeably. Explicit fusions provide a small-step account of reaction in process calculi such as the pi-calculus and the fusion calculus. In this respect they are similar to the explicit substitutions of Abadi, Cardelli and Curien, which do the same for the lambda-calculus. In this paper we give a technical foundation for explicit fusions. We present the pi-F calculus, a simple process calculus with explicit fusions. We define a bisimulation congruence, and give embeddings of the pi-calculus and the fusion calculus. The latter embedding is fully abstract with respect to bisimulation.
@InProceedings{gw00_explicit_fusions,
author = "Philippa Gardner and Lucian Wischik",
title = "Explicit fusions",
booktitle = "MFCS 2000",
year = 2000,
editor = "Mogens Nielsen and Branislav Rovan",
volume = 1893,
pages = "373--382",
series = "Lecture Notes in Computer Science",
publisher = "Springer-Verlag",
url = "http:// www.wischik.com/ lu/ research/ explicit-fusions.html",
note = "Full version to appear in TCS",
}