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International Symposium on Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis

ATVA 2017: Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis pp 400–416Cite as

Finding Polynomial Loop Invariants for Probabilistic Programs

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 10482))

Abstract

Quantitative loop invariants are an essential element in the verification of probabilistic programs. Recently, multivariate Lagrange interpolation has been applied to synthesizing polynomial invariants. In this paper, we propose an alternative approach. First, we fix a polynomial template as a candidate of a loop invariant. Using Stengle’s Positivstellensatz and a transformation to a sum-of-squares problem, we find sufficient conditions on the coefficients. Then, we solve a semidefinite programming feasibility problem to synthesize the loop invariants. If the semidefinite program is unfeasible, we backtrack after increasing the degree of the template. Our approach is semi-complete in the sense that it will always lead us to a feasible solution if one exists and numerical errors are small. Experimental results show the efficiency of our approach.

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Acknowledgement

This work has been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 61532019 and 61472473), the CAS/SAFEA International Partnership Program for Creative Research Teams, and the Sino-German CDZ project CAP (GZ 1023).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. LMAM and School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Yijun Feng & Bican Xia

  2. State Key Laboratory of Computer Science, Institute of Software, CAS, Beijing, China

    Lijun Zhang, David N. Jansen & Naijun Zhan

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Lijun Zhang

Authors
  1. Yijun Feng
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  2. Lijun Zhang
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  3. David N. Jansen
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  4. Naijun Zhan
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  5. Bican Xia
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yijun Feng or David N. Jansen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

    Deepak D'Souza

  2. Chennai Mathematical Institute, Kelambakkam, India

    K. Narayan Kumar

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Feng, Y., Zhang, L., Jansen, D.N., Zhan, N., Xia, B. (2017). Finding Polynomial Loop Invariants for Probabilistic Programs. In: D'Souza, D., Narayan Kumar, K. (eds) Automated Technology for Verification and Analysis. ATVA 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10482. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68167-2_26

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68167-2_26

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-68166-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-68167-2

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