Modes of Convergence for Term Graph Rewriting

Term graph rewriting provides a simple mechanism to finitely represent restricted forms of infinitary term rewriting. The correspondence between infinitary term rewriting and term graph rewriting has been studied to some extent. However, this endeavour is impaired by the lack of an appropriate counterpart of infinitary rewriting on the side of term graphs. We aim to fill this gap by devising two modes of convergence based on a partial order resp. a metric on term graphs. The thus obtained structures generalise corresponding modes of convergence that are usually studied in infinitary term rewriting. We argue that this yields a common framework in which both term rewriting and term graph rewriting can be studied. In order to substantiate our claim, we compare convergence on term graphs and on terms. In particular, we show that the resulting infinitary calculi of term graph rewriting exhibit the same correspondence as we know it from term rewriting: Convergence via the partial order is a conservative extension of the metric convergence.