Converging from Branching to Linear Metrics on Markov Chains?

Abstract. We study the strong and strutter trace distances on Markov chains (MCs). Our interest in these metrics is motivated by their relation to the probabilistic LTL-model checking problem: we prove that they correspond to the maximal differences in the probability of satisfying the same LTL and LTL-x (LTL without next operator) formulas, respectively. The threshold problem for these distances (whether their value exceeds a given threshold) is NP-hard and not known to be decidable. Neverthe-less, we provide an approximation schema where each lower and upper-approximant is computable in polynomial time in the size of the MC. The upper-approximants are Kantorovich-like pseudometrics, i.e. branch-ing-time distances, that converge point-wise to the linear-time metrics. This convergence is interesting in itself, since it reveals a nontrivial re-lation between branching and linear-time metric-based semantics that does not hold in the case of equivalence-based semantics.