The paper Almost Fair Simulations recently introduced a collection of deductive systems for interactive proofs of language inclusion between Büchi automata. These deductive systems enable intuitive proofs via cyclic reasoning principles, but are unfortunately incomplete for fair similarity, a standard notion of refinement for Büchi automata. In this paper, we address this shortcoming by presenting a new deductive system for language inclusion of Büchi automata that preserves the simplicity of Almost Fair Simulations, with the additional benefit of being complete for fair similarity. We mechanized the soundness and the completeness proofs of our new system in the Rocq proof assistant. The proofs rely on a new technique we call nested parameterized coinduction, an adaptation of Hur’s et al. parameterized coinduction for the difficult case of proofs by coinduction-induction-coinduction.

It is well known that liveness properties cannot be proven using standard simulation arguments. This issue has been mitigated by extending standard notions of simulation for transition systems to fairness-preserving simulations for systems equipped with an additional fairness condition modeling liveness assumptions and/or liveness requirements. In the context of automated verification of finite-state systems, proofs by simulation are an appealing method as there exist efficient algorithms to find a simulation between two systems. However, applications of fair simulation to interactive verification have been much less studied. Perhaps one reason is that the definitions of fair simulation relations typically involve non-trivial nestings of inductive and coinductive relations, making them particularly difficult to use and to reason about. In this paper, we argue that in many cases, stronger notions of fair simulation involving more controlled alternations of fixed points are sufficient. Starting from known fair simulation techniques, we progressively build up a family of almost fair simulation relations for transition systems equipped with a Büchi fairness condition. The simulation relations we present can all be equipped with intuitive reasoning rules, leading to elegant deductive systems to prove fair trace inclusion. We mechanized our simulation relations and their associated deductive systems in the Rocq proof assistant, proved their soundness, and we demonstrate their use through a selection of examples.