The logic of exact covers

Abstract

We show that all (not necessarily normal or monotone) modal logics that can be axiomatised in rank-1 have the interpolation property, and that in fact interpolation is uniform if the logics just have finitely many modal operators. As immediate applications, we obtain previously unknown interpolation theorems for a range of modal logics, containing probabilistic and graded modal logic, alternating temporal logic and some variants of conditional logic. Technically, this is achieved by translating to and from a new (coalgebraic) logic introduced in this paper, the logic of exact covers. It is interpreted over coalgebras for an endofunctor on the category of sets that also directly determines the syntax. Apart from closure under bisimulation quantifiers (and hence interpolation), we also provide a complete tableaux calculus and establish both the Hennessy-Milner and the small model property for this logic. Show more