Abstract We present the spinal atomic $$\lambda $$ λ -calculus, a typed $$\lambda $$ λ -calculus with explicit sharing and atomic duplication that achieves spinal full laziness: duplicating only the direct paths between a binder and bound variables is enough for beta reduction to proceed. We show this calculus is the result of a Curry–Howard style interpretation of a deep-inference proof system, and prove that it has natural properties with respect to the $$\lambda $$ λ -calculus: confluence and preservation of strong normalisation.

An explicit-sharing lambda-calculus is presented, based on a Curry-Howard-style interpretation of the deep inference proof formalism. Duplication of subterms during reduction proceeds `atomically', i.e. on individual constructors, similar to optimal graph reduction in the style of Lamping. The calculus preserves strong normalisation with respect to the lambda-calculus, and achieves fully lazy sharing.

This work belongs to a wider effort aimed at eliminating syntactic bureaucracy from proof systems. In this paper, we present a novel cut elimination procedure for classical propositional logic. It is based on the recently introduced `atomic flows': they are purely graphical devices that abstract away from much of the typical bureaucracy of proofs. We make crucial use of the `path breaker', an atomic flow construction that avoids some nasty termination problems, and that can be used in any proof system with sufficient symmetry. This paper contains an original 2-dimensional-diagram exposition of atomic flows, which helps us to connect atomic flows with other known formalisms.

In usual proof systems, like the sequent calculus, only a very limited way of combining proofs is available through the tree structure. We present in this paper a logic-independent proof calculus, where proofs can be freely composed by connectives, and prove its basic properties. The main advantage of this proof calculus is that it allows to avoid certain types of syntactic bureaucracy inherent to all usual proof systems, in particular the sequent calculus. Proofs in this system closely reflect their atomic flow, which traces the behaviour of atoms through structural rules. The general definition is illustrated by the standard deep-inference system for propositional logic, for which there are known rewriting techniques that achieve cut elimination based only on the information in atomic flows.

We introduce `atomic flows': they are graphs obtained from derivations by tracing atom occurrences and forgetting the logical structure. We study simple manipulations of atomic flows that correspond to complex reductions on derivations. This allows us to prove, for propositional logic, a new and very general normalisation theorem, which contains cut elimination as a special case. We operate in deep inference, which is more general than other syntactic paradigms, and where normalisation is more difficult to control. We argue that atomic flows are a significant technical advance for normalisation theory, because 1) the technique they support is largely independent of syntax; 2) indeed, it is largely independent of logical inference rules; 3) they constitute a powerful geometric formalism, which is more intuitive than syntax.