IMELL Cut Elimination with Linear Overhead

Abstract

Recently, Accattoli introduced the Exponential Substitution Calculus (ESC) given by untyped proof terms for Intuitionistic Multiplicative Exponential Linear Logic (IMELL), endowed with rewriting rules at-a-distance for cut elimination. He also introduced a new cut elimination strategy, dubbed the good strategy, and showed that its number of steps is a time cost model with polynomial overhead for the ESC/IMELL, and the first such one. Here, we refine Accattoli's result by introducing an abstract machine for ESC and proving that it implements the good strategy and computes cut-free terms/proofs within a linear overhead.