On the coalgebra of partial differential equations

We note that the coalgebra of formal power series in commutative variables is final in a certain subclass of coalgebras. Moreover, a system Sigma of polynomial PDEs, under a coherence condition, naturally induces such a coalgebra over differential polynomial expressions. As a result, we obtain a clean coinductive proof of existence and uniqueness of solutions of initial value problems for PDEs. Based on this characterization, we give complete algorithms for checking equivalence of differential polynomial expressions, given Sigma.