Summary
The notion of a branching process is introduced, as a formalization of an initial part of a run of a Petri net, including nondeterministic choices. This generalizes the notion of a process in a natural way. It is shown that the set of branching processes of a Petri net is a complete lattice, with respect to the natural notion of partial order. The largest element of this lattice is the unfolding of the Petri net.
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Engelfriet, J. Branching processes of Petri nets. Acta Informatica 28, 575–591 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01463946
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01463946