Realizability and Strong Normalization for a Curry-Howard Interpretation of HA + EM1

We present a new Curry-Howard correspondence for HA + EM_1, constructive Heyting Arithmetic with the excluded middle on Sigma^0_1-formulas. We add to the lambda calculus an operator ||_a which represents, from the viewpoint of programming, an exception operator with a delimited scope, and from the viewpoint of logic, a restricted version of the excluded middle. We motivate the restriction of the excluded middle by its use in proof mining; we introduce new techniques to prove strong normalization for HA + EM_1 and the witness property for simply existential statements. One may consider our results as an application of the ideas of Interactive realizability, which we have adapted to the new setting and used to prove our main theorems