Itegories
Robin Cockett, Jean-Simon Pacaud Lemay
TL;DR
The paper develops Kleene wands and itegories to model guarded iteration in restriction categories that lack coproducts, introducing interference relations to capture disjointness. It proves that, in extensive restriction categories, a Kleene wand is equivalent to a parametrized iteration operator and hence to a trace operator, and it supplies a matrix-based embedding (MAT) that constructs traced extensive restriction categories from interference data. By establishing a bijection between Kleene wands and trace/Iter operators in this setting, the work unifies guarded iteration with classical trace theories while enabling iteration in coproduct-free contexts. The results recover standard traces for partial functions and connect to broader notions like geometry of interaction and turing-categorical frameworks, with potential implications for modeling imperative constructs and computation in restriction-category settings.
Abstract
An itegory is a restriction category with a Kleene wand. Cockett, Díaz-Boïls, Gallagher, and Hrubeš briefly introduced Kleene wands to capture iteration in restriction categories arising from complexity theory. The purpose of this paper is to develop in more detail the theory of Kleene wands and itegories. A Kleene wand is a binary operator which takes in two disjoint partial maps, an endomorphism ${X \to X}$ and a map ${X \to A}$ and produces a partial map $X \to A$. This latter map is interpreted as iterating the endomorphism until it lands in the domain of definition of the second map. In a setting with infinite disjoint joins, there is always a canonical Kleene wand given by realizing this intuition. The standard categorical interpretation of iteration is via trace operators on coproducts. For extensive restriction categories, we explain in detail how having a Kleene wand is equivalent to this standard interpretation of iteration. This suggests that Kleene wands can be used to replace parametrized iteration and traces in restriction categories which lack coproducts. Further evidence of this is exhibited by providing a matrix construction which embeds an itegory into a traced extensive restriction category. We also consider Kleene wands in classical restriction categories and show how, in this case, a Kleene wand is completely determined by its endomorphism component.