We show in this paper that all fragments of intuitionistic propostional logic based on a subset of the connectives $\wedge, \vee, \rightarrow, \neg$ satisfy interpolation. Fragments containing $\leftrightarrow$ or ¬¬ are briefly considered.

Important positive as well as negative results on interpolation property in fragments of the intuitionistic propositional logic (INT) were obtained by J. I. Zucker in [6]. He proved that the interpolation theorem holds in purely implicational fragment of INT. He also gave an example of a fragment of INT for which interpolation fails. This fragment is determined by the constant falsum (), well known connectives: implication () and conjunction (), and by a ternary connective defined as follows: (p, q, r)= (...) df (pq)(pr).Extending this result of J. I. Zucker, G. R. Renardel de Lavalette proved in [5] that there are continuously many fragments of INT without the interpolation property. (shrink)

We prove the following surprising property of Heyting's intuitionistic propositional calculus, IpC. Consider the collection of formulas, φ, built up from propositional variables (p,q,r,...) and falsity $(\perp)$ using conjunction $(\wedge)$ , disjunction (∨) and implication (→). Write $\vdash\phi$ to indicate that such a formula is intuitionistically valid. We show that for each variable p and formula φ there exists a formula Apφ (effectively computable from φ), containing only variables not equal to p which occur in φ, and such that for (...) all formulas ψ not involving $p, \vdash \psi \rightarrow A_p\phi$ if and only if $\vdash \psi \rightarrow \phi$ . Consequently quantification over propositional variables can be modelled in IpC, and there is an interpretation of the second order propositional calculus, IpC2, in IpC which restricts to the identity on first order propositions. An immediate corollary is the strengthening of the usual interpolation theorem for IpC to the statement that there are least and greatest interpolant formulas for any given pair of formulas. The result also has a number of interesting consequences for the algebraic counterpart of IpC, the theory of Heyting algebras. In particular we show that a model of IpC2 can be constructed whose algebra of truth-values is equal to any given Heyting algebra. (shrink)