We show that every continuous valuation on a locally convex, locally convex-compact, sober topological cone $\mathfrak{C}$ has a barycenter. This barycenter is unique, and the barycenter map $\beta$ is continuous, hence is the structure map of a $\mathbf V_{\mathrm w}$-algebra, i.e., an Eilenberg-Moore algebra of the extended valuation monad on the category of $T_0$ topological spaces; it is, in fact, the unique $\mathbf V_{\mathrm w}$-algebra that induces the cone structure on $\mathfrak{C}$.

We give a domain-theoretic semantics to a statistical programming language, using the plain old category of dcpos, in contrast to some more sophisticated recent proposals. Remarkably, our monad of minimal valuations is commutative, which allows for program transformations that permute the order of independent random draws, as one would expect. A similar property is not known for Jones and Plotkin’s monad of continuous valuations. Instead of working with true real numbers, we work with exact real arithmetic, providing a bridge towards possible implementations (implementations by themselves are not addressed here). Rather remarkably, we show that restricting ourselves to minimal valuations does not restrict us much: All measures on the real line can be modeled by minimal valuations on the domain I ℝ ⊥ of exact real arithmetic. We give three operational semantics for our language, and we show that they are all adequate with respect to the denotational semantics. We also explore quite a few examples to demonstrate that our semantics computes exactly as one would expect and to debunk the myth that a semantics based on continuous maps would not be expressive enough to encode measures with non-compact support using only measures with compact support, or to encode measures via non-continuous density functions, for instance. Our examples also include some useful, non-trivial cases of distributions on higher-order objects.

We consider a programming language that can manipulate both classical and quantum information. Our language is type-safe and designed for variational quantum programming, which is a hybrid classical-quantum computational paradigm. The classical subsystem of the language is the Probabilistic FixPoint Calculus (PFPC), which is a lambda calculus with mixed-variance recursive types, term recursion and probabilistic choice. The quantum subsystem is a first-order linear type system that can manipulate quantum information. The two subsystems are related by mixed classical/quantum terms that specify how classical probabilistic effects are induced by quantum measurements, and conversely, how classical (probabilistic) programs can influence the quantum dynamics. We also describe a sound and computationally adequate denotational semantics for the language. Classical probabilistic effects are interpreted using a recently-described commutative probabilistic monad on DCPO. Quantum effects and resources are interpreted in a category of von Neumann algebras that we show is enriched over (continuous) domains. This strong sense of enrichment allows us to develop novel semantic methods that we use to interpret the relationship between the quantum and classical probabilistic effects. By doing so we provide a very detailed denotational analysis that relates domain-theoretic models of classical probabilistic programming to models of quantum programming.

A long-standing open problem in the semantics of programming languages supporting probabilistic choice is to find a commutative monad for probability on the category DCPO. In this paper we present three such monads and a general construction for finding even more. We show how to use these monads to provide a sound and adequate denotational semantics for the Probabilistic FixPoint Calculus (PFPC) - a call-by-value simply-typed lambda calculus with mixed-variance recursive types, term recursion and probabilistic choice. We also show that in the special case of continuous dcpo's, all three monads coincide with the valuations monad of Jones, and we fully characterise the induced Eilenberg-Moore categories by showing that they are all isomorphic to the category of continuous Kegelspitzen of Keimel and Plotkin.

Abstract We give two concrete examples of continuous valuations on dcpo’s to separate minimal valuations, point-continuous valuations, and continuous valuations: (1) Let ${\mathcal J}$ be the Johnstone’s non-sober dcpo, and μ be the continuous valuation on ${\mathcal J}$ with μ(U)=1 for nonempty Scott opens U and μ(U)=0 for $U=\emptyset$ . Then, μ is a point-continuous valuation on ${\mathcal J}$ that is not minimal. (2) Lebesgue measure extends to a measure on the Sorgenfrey line $\mathbb{R}_\ell$ . Its restriction to the open subsets of $\mathbb{R}_\ell$ is a continuous valuation λ. Then, its image valuation $\overline\lambda$ through the embedding of $\mathbb{R}_\ell$ into its Smyth powerdomain $\mathcal{Q}\mathbb{R}_\ell$ in the Scott topology is a continuous valuation that is not point-continuous. We believe that our construction $\overline\lambda$ might be useful in giving counterexamples displaying the failure of the general Fubini-type equations on dcpo’s.

We introduce a new concept of continuity of posets, called θ-continuity. Topological characterizations of θ-continuous posets are put forward. We also present two types of dcpo-completion of posets which are Dθ-completion and Ds2-completion. Connections between these notions of continuity and dcpo-completions of posets are investigated. The main results are (1) a poset P is θ-continuous iff its θ-topology lattice is completely distributive iff it is a quasi θ-continuous and meet θ-continuous poset iff its Dθ-completion is a domain; (2) the Dθ-completion of a poset B is isomorphic to a domain L iff B is a θ-embedded basis of L; (3) if a poset P is θ-continuous, then the Dθ-completion Dθ(P) is isomorphic to the round ideal completion RI(P, ≪θ).