Distilling Formal Logic into Neural Spaces: A Kernel Alignment Approach for Signal Temporal Logic

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Candussio, Sara, Sarti, Gabriele, Saveri, Gaia, Bortolussi, Luca
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866908868461723648
author Candussio, Sara
Sarti, Gabriele
Saveri, Gaia
Bortolussi, Luca
author_facet Candussio, Sara
Sarti, Gabriele
Saveri, Gaia
Bortolussi, Luca
contents We introduce a framework for learning continuous neural representations of formal specifications by distilling the geometry of their semantics into a latent space. Existing approaches rely either on symbolic kernels -- which preserve behavioural semantics but are computationally prohibitive, anchor-dependent, and non-invertible -- or on syntax-based neural embeddings that fail to capture underlying structures. Our method bridges this gap: using a teacher-student setup, we distill a symbolic robustness kernel into a Transformer encoder. Unlike standard contrastive methods, we supervise the model with a continuous, kernel-weighted geometric alignment objective that penalizes errors in proportion to their semantic discrepancies. Once trained, the encoder produces embeddings in a single forward pass, effectively mimicking the kernel's logic at a fraction of its computational cost. We apply our framework to Signal Temporal Logic (STL), demonstrating that the resulting neural representations faithfully preserve the semantic similarity of STL formulae, accurately predict robustness and constraint satisfaction, and remain intrinsically invertible. Our proposed approach enables highly efficient, scalable neuro-symbolic reasoning and formula reconstruction without repeated kernel computation at runtime.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_05198
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Distilling Formal Logic into Neural Spaces: A Kernel Alignment Approach for Signal Temporal Logic
Candussio, Sara
Sarti, Gabriele
Saveri, Gaia
Bortolussi, Luca
Computation and Language
Symbolic Computation
We introduce a framework for learning continuous neural representations of formal specifications by distilling the geometry of their semantics into a latent space. Existing approaches rely either on symbolic kernels -- which preserve behavioural semantics but are computationally prohibitive, anchor-dependent, and non-invertible -- or on syntax-based neural embeddings that fail to capture underlying structures. Our method bridges this gap: using a teacher-student setup, we distill a symbolic robustness kernel into a Transformer encoder. Unlike standard contrastive methods, we supervise the model with a continuous, kernel-weighted geometric alignment objective that penalizes errors in proportion to their semantic discrepancies. Once trained, the encoder produces embeddings in a single forward pass, effectively mimicking the kernel's logic at a fraction of its computational cost. We apply our framework to Signal Temporal Logic (STL), demonstrating that the resulting neural representations faithfully preserve the semantic similarity of STL formulae, accurately predict robustness and constraint satisfaction, and remain intrinsically invertible. Our proposed approach enables highly efficient, scalable neuro-symbolic reasoning and formula reconstruction without repeated kernel computation at runtime.
title Distilling Formal Logic into Neural Spaces: A Kernel Alignment Approach for Signal Temporal Logic
topic Computation and Language
Symbolic Computation
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.05198