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I'm reading the Model Chekcing book of E. M. Clarke and in the chapter about ยต-calculus there is an example formula $$ f = \mu Z. ((q \mathrel{\mathrm{AND}} Y) \mathrel{\mathrm{OR}} \langle a \rangle Z) $$ As the author has mentioned, here $Y$ is a free variable, and we need an association list to pair $Y$ with the corresponding states. But why do we need it? Can it be replaced by an atomic proposition?

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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Y. Tang
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If you define the $\mu$-calculus to not allow free variables, you would have the problem that the components of a well-formed formula are not again well-formed formulas.

Consider a well-formed formula "$\mu Z . \varphi$", such that $Z$ occurs freely in $\varphi$ and $\varphi$ has no other free variables. If you were to exclude formulas with free variables from your definition, $\varphi$ would not be a well-formed formula.

This would make structural induction on formulas more complicated. For example the semantics of formulas (the set of states in which the formula holds) is usually defined inductively: You define the semantics of "$\mu Z . \varphi$" in terms of the semantics of $\varphi$. If your definition says $\varphi$ is not a well-formed formula, you would have to extended the induction to also cover these non-well-formed cases. If you have to consider these cases every time you do structural induction, you haven't really gained anything from excluding them in your definition.

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