The Abstract Machinery of Interaction (Long Version)

Abstract: This paper revisits the Interaction Abstract Machine (IAM), a machine based on Girard's Geometry of Interaction, introduced by Mackie and Danos & Regnier. It is an unusual machine, not relying on environments, presented on linear logic proof nets, and whose soundness proof is convoluted and passes through various other formalisms. Here we provide a new direct proof of its correctness, based on a variant of Sands's improvements, a natural notion of bisimulation. Moreover, our proof is carried out on a new presentation of the IAM, defined as a machine acting directly on $\lambda$-terms, rather than on linear logic proof nets.