Termination Problems in Chemical Kinetics

We consider nondeterministic and probabilistic termination problems in a process algebra that is equivalent to basic chemistry. We show that the existence of a terminating computation is decidable, but that termination with any probability strictly greater than zero is undecidable. Moreover, we show that the fairness intrinsic in stochastic computations implies that termination of all computation paths is undecidable, while it is decidable in a nondeterministic framework.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: CONCUR
• Authors: Gianluigi Zavattaro, Luca Cardelli
• Keywords: CONCUR 2008, Distributed And Parallel Computing, Nondeterministic Framework, Probabilistic Termination Problems, Terminating Computation