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We introduce a sequent calculus with a simple restriction of Lambek's product rules that precisely captures the classical Tamari order, i.e., the partial order on fully-bracketed words (equivalently, binary trees) induced by a semi-associative law (equivalently, tree rotation). We establish a focusing property for this sequent calculus (a strengthening of cut-elimination), which yields the following coherence theorem: every valid entailment in the Tamari order has exactly one focused derivation. One combinatorial application of this coherence theorem is a new proof of the Tutte-Chapoton formula for the number of intervals in the Tamari lattice Y_n. Elsewhere, we have also used the sequent calculus and the coherence theorem to build a surprising bijection between intervals of the Tamari order and a natural fragment of lambda calculus, consisting of the beta-normal planar lambda terms with no closed proper subterms.
@InProceedings{zeilberger:LIPIcs.FSCD.2017.33,
author = {Zeilberger, Noam},
title = {{A Sequent Calculus for a Semi-Associative Law}},
booktitle = {2nd International Conference on Formal Structures for Computation and Deduction (FSCD 2017)},
pages = {33:1--33:16},
series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
ISBN = {978-3-95977-047-7},
ISSN = {1868-8969},
year = {2017},
volume = {84},
editor = {Miller, Dale},
publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
address = {Dagstuhl, Germany},
URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSCD.2017.33},
URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-77179},
doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.FSCD.2017.33},
annote = {Keywords: proof theory, combinatorics, coherence theorem, substructural logic, associativity}
}