Appel and McAllesters step-indexed logical relations have proven to be a simple and effective technique for reasoning about programs in languages with semantically interesting types, such as general recursive types and general reference types. Howeve
r, proofs using step-indexed models typically involve tedious, error-prone, and proof-obscuring step-index arithmetic, so it is important to develop clean, high-level, equational proof principles that avoid mention of step indices. In this paper, we show how to reason about binary step-indexed logical relations in an abstract and elegant way. Specifically, we define a logic LSLR, which is inspired by Plotkin and Abadis logic for parametricity, but also supports recursively defined relations by means of the modal later operator from Appel, Melli`es, Richards, and Vouillons very modal model paper. We encode in LSLR a logical relation for reasoning relationally about programs in call-by-value System F extended with general recursive types. Using this logical relation, we derive a set of useful rules with which we can prove contextual equivalence and approximation results without counting steps.
