Quantum information brings together theories of physics and computer science. This synthesis challenges the basic intuitions of both fields. In this thesis, we show that adopting a unified and general language for process theories advances foundations and practical applications of quantum information. Our first set of results analyze quantum algorithms with a process theoretic structure. We contribute new constructions of the Fourier transform and Pontryagin duality in dagger symmetric monoidal categories. We then use this setting to study generalized unitary oracles and give a new quantum blackbox algorithm for the identification of group homomorphisms, solving the GROUPHOMID problem. In the remaining section, we construct a novel model of quantum blackbox algorithms in non-deterministic classical computation. Our second set of results concerns quantum foundations. We complete work begun by Coecke et al., definitively connecting the Mermin non-locality of a process theory with a simple algebraic condition on that theory's phase groups. This result allows us to offer new experimental tests for Mermin non-locality and new protocols for quantum secret sharing. In our final chapter, we exploit the shared process theoretic structure of quantum information and distributional compositional linguistics. We propose a quantum algorithm adapted from Weibe et al. to classify sentences by meaning. The clarity of the process theoretic setting allows us to recover a speedup that is lost in the naive application of the algorithm. The main mathematical tools used in this thesis are group theory (esp. Fourier theory on finite groups), monoidal category theory, and categorical algebra.
Abstract interpretation, Hoare logic, and incorrectness (or reverse Hoare) logic are powerful techniques for static analysis of computer programs. All of them have been successfully extended to the quantum setting, but largely developed in parallel. In this paper, we examine the relationship between these techniques in the context of verifying quantum while-programs, where the abstract domain and the set of assertions for quantum states are well-structured. In particular, we show that any complete quantum abstract interpretation induces a quantum Hoare logic and a quantum incorrectness logic, …
With the race to build large-scale quantum computers and efforts to exploit quantum algorithms for efficient problem solving in science and engineering disciplines, the requirement to have efficient and scalable verification methods are of vital importance. We propose a novel formal verification method that is targeted at Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT) circuits. QFT is a fundamental quantum algorithm that forms the basis of many quantum computing applications. The verification method employs abstractions of quantum gates used in QFT that leads to a reduction of the verification problem from H…
The notion of equality between two observables will play many important roles in foundations of quantum theory. However, the standard probabilistic interpretation based on the conventional Born formula does not give the probability of equality relation for a pair of arbitrary observables, since the Born formula gives the probability distribution only for a commuting family of observables. In this paper, quantum set theory developed by Takeuti and the present author is used to systematically extend the probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory to define the probability of equality relation…
Quantum algorithms are sequences of abstract operations, performed on non-existent computers. They are in obvious need of categorical semantics. We present some steps in this direction, following earlier contributions of Abramsky, Coecke and Selinger. In particular, we analyze function abstraction in quantum computation, which turns out to characterize its classical interfaces. Some quantum algorithms provide feasible solutions of important hard problems, such as factoring and discrete log (which are the building blocks of modern cryptography). It is of a great practical interest to precisely …
We show that a pair of complementary dagger-Frobenius algebras, equipped with a self-conjugate comonoid homomorphism onto one of the algebras, produce a nontrivial unitary morphism on the product of the algebras. This gives an abstract understanding of the structure of an oracle in a quantum computation, and we apply this understanding to develop a new algorithm for the deterministic identification of group homomorphisms into abelian groups. We also discuss an application to the categorical theory of signal-flow networks.
Previously we have shown that the topos approach to quantum theory of Doering and Isham can be generalised to a class of categories typically studied within the monoidal approach to quantum theory of Abramsky and Coecke. In the monoidal approach to quantum theory H*-algebras provide an axiomatisation of states and observables. Here we show that H*-algebras naturally correspond with the notions of states and observables in the generalised topos approach to quantum theory. We then combine these results with the dagger-kernel approach to quantum logic of Heunen and Jacobs, which we use to prove a…
Our primary purpose is to isolate the abstract, mathematical properties of circuits -- both classical Boolean circuits and quantum circuits -- that are essential for their computational interpretation. A secondary purpose is to clarify the similarities and differences between the classical and quantum situations. The general philosophy in this note is to include the mathematically essential aspects of circuits but to omit any of the additional structures that are usually included for convenience. We shall, however, retain the assumption that circuits are finite; this assumption does no harm to…
Beginning in abstract space and dislodging the representational form paves a way to formulate a version of a quantum physical measurement scheme. With materiality playing sustainment roles with respect to q-states, these latter control system response towards external probes. Sustainment concerns all possible q-states. The particle character usually assigned to eigenstates and eigenvalues dies out, while energy gaps relate to possible energy quanta exchanges; the occupancy concept no longer required. Abstract and laboratory spaces are incommensurate, linking them leads to a possible physical q…
We provide an accessible popular science version of a research article published by Diederik Aerts and the author [Ann. Phys. 351 (2014) 975--1025, arXiv:1404.2429], where an extended version of the quantum formalism was proposed as a possible solution to the measurement problem.
We give a scheme for interpreting shaded tangles as quantum programs, with the property that isotopic tangles yield equivalent programs. We analyze many known quantum programs in this way -- including entanglement manipulation and error correction -- and in each case present a fully-topological formal verification, yielding in several cases substantial new insight into how the program works. We also use our methods to identify several new or generalized procedures.
The main goal of this paper is to give a rigorous mathematical description of systems for processing quantum information. To do it authors consider abstract state machines as models of classical computational systems. This class of machines is refined by introducing constrains on a state structure, namely, it is assumed that state of computational process has two components: a control unit state and a memory state. Then authors modify the class of models by substituting the deterministic evolutionary mechanism for a stochastic evolutionary mechanism. This approach can be generalized to the qua…
The efficient certification of classically intractable quantum devices has been a central research question for some time. However, to observe a "quantum advantage", it is believed that one does not need to build a large scale universal quantum computer, a task which has proven extremely challenging. Intermediate quantum models that are easier to implement, but which also exhibit this quantum advantage over classical computers, have been proposed. In this work, we present a certification technique for such a sub-universal quantum server which only performs commuting gates and requires very lim…
This manuscript is an extended abstract version of the paper entitled ``Quantum Deletion Codes derived from Classical Deletion Codes.'' The paper contributes to the fundamental theory for quantum deletion error-correcting codes. The paper proposes a code construction condition for a partition of classical deletion error-correcting codes to derive quantum deletion error-correcting codes. The construction methods in this paper give examples of quantum codes that can correct single-quantum deletion errors and have a code rate arbitrarily close to 1, while the previously known quantum deletion cod…
As quantum computers become real, it is high time we come up with effective techniques that help programmers write correct quantum programs. In classical computing, formal verification and sound static type systems prevent several classes of bugs from being introduced. There is a need for similar techniques in the quantum regime. Inspired by Hoare Type Theory in the classical paradigm, we propose Quantum Hoare Types by extending the Quantum IO Monad by indexing it with pre- and post-conditions that serve as program specifications. In this paper, we introduce Quantum Hoare Type Theory (QHTT), p…
Using the measurement-based quantum computation model, we construct interactive proofs with non-communicating quantum provers and a classical verifier. Our construction gives interactive proofs for all languages in BQP with a polynomial number of quantum provers, each of which, in the honest case, performs only a single measurement. Our techniques use self-tested graph states which allow us to test the provers for honesty, establishing that they hold onto a particular graph state and measure it in specified bases. In this extended abstract we give an overview of the construction and proofs.
Given an equivalence relation ~ on a set U, there are two abstract notions of an element of the quotient set U/~. The #1 abstract notion is a set S=[u] of equivalent elements of U (an equivalence class); the #2 notion is an abstract entity u_{S} that is definite on what is common to the elements of the equivalence class S but is otherwise indefinite on the differences between those elements. For instance, the #1 interpretation of a homotopy type is an equivalence class of homotopic spaces, but the #2 interpretation, e.g., as developed in homotopy type theory, is an abstract space (without poin…
In the description of electron spin obtained through the conventional Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, the concrete picture of rotation was replaced by an abstract mathematical representation; visualization or visualisability was entirely lost. The work described here takes a step towards restoring this.
A representation of finite-dimensional probabilistic models in terms of formally real Jordan algebras is obtained, in a strikingly easy way, from simple assumptions. This provides a framework in which real, complex and quaternionic quantum mechanics can be treated on an equal footing, and allows some (but not too much) room for other alternatives. This is based on earlier work (arXiv:1206:2897), but the development here is further simplified, and also extended in several ways. I also discuss the possibilities for organizing probabilistic models, subject to the assumptions discussed here, into …
Recent studies using the quantum information theoretic approach to thermodynamics show that the presence of coherence in quantum systems generates corrections to classical fluctuation theorems. To explicate the physical origins and implications of such corrections, we here convert an abstract framework of an autonomous quantum Crooks relation into quantum Crooks equalities for well-known coherent, squeezed and cat states. We further provide a proposal for a concrete experimental scenario to test these equalities. Our scheme consists of the autonomous evolution of a trapped ion and uses a posit…
Due to the unreliability and limited capacity of existing quantum computer prototypes, quantum circuit simulation continues to be a vital tool for validating next generation quantum computers and for studying variational quantum algorithms, which are among the leading candidates for useful quantum computation. Existing quantum circuit simulators do not address the common traits of variational algorithms, namely: 1) their ability to work with noisy qubits and operations, 2) their repeated execution of the same circuits but with different parameters, and 3) the fact that they sample from circuit…
We present a new application of harmonic analysis to quantum information by constructing intriguing classes of quantum channels stemming from specific representations of multiplier algebras over locally compact groups $G$. Beginning with a representation of the measure algebra $M(G)$, we unify and elaborate on recent counter-examples to fixed point subalgebras in infinite dimensions, as well as present an application to the noiseless subsystems method of quantum error correction. Using a representation of the completely bounded Fourier multiplier algebra $McbA(G)$, we provide a new class of co…
In this paper, we present an abstract model of continuous-time quantum walk (CTQW) based on Bernoulli functionals and show that the model has perfect state transfer (PST), among others. Let $\mathfrak{h}$ be the space of square integrable complex-valued Bernoulli functionals, which is infinitely dimensional. First, we construct on a given subspace $\mathfrak{h}_L \subset \mathfrak{h}$ a self-adjoint operator $Δ_L$ via the canonical unitary involutions on $\mathfrak{h}$, and by analyzing its spectral structure we find out all its eigenvalues. Then, we introduce an abstract model of CTQW with $\…
