Section: Application Domains

Application Domains

The first application is to pure mathematics. The use of proof assistants for proving genuine mathematical theorems has been considered as utopic for long. But several recent developments have changed the situation. First of all, the development of libraries of both constructive and classical analysis has led the possibility to use Coq, not only in remote areas of discrete mathematics, but also to prove mainstream mathematical theorem as taught in an undergrad textbook for instance. This direction culminated with the proof in Coq of the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra, a few years ago, by a group of researchers in Nijmegen. More recent work include a proof of the Four color theorem in Coq, proofs of lemma's on polynomials used in the proof of Hale's Sphere packing theorem (Kepler's conjecture), proofs in algebraic geometry by a group of mathematicians in Nice. The Mathematical Components group of the INRIA - MSR Joint Centre is working on the formalisation of the Feit Thompson theorem (1962) for groups of odd order, which is a milestone in the classification of finite groups.

Another direction is the proof of algorithms. In proofs of algorithms (as opposed to proofs of programs) a property is proved on an algorithms formalized in the language of Coq. An example is the recent proof of algorithms used in floating point arithmetic or the older proof carried out by the company Trusted Logic of the correctness that has reached, for the first time, the EAL7 level in common criteria.

The most applied use of Coq is the proof of programs where an actual program written in the syntax of a general purpose programming language (such as Caml, Java or C). The system Coq is used by the ProVal project-team, that has strong historical connections to TypiCal, as a back-end of their systems Why, Krakatoa and Caduceus.