Selinger gave a superoperator model of a first-order quantum programming language and proved that it is fully definable and hence fully abstract. This paper proposes an extension of the superoperator model to higher-order programs based on modules over superoperators or, equivalently, enriched presheaves over the category of superoperators. The enriched presheaf category can be easily proved to be a model of intuitionistic linear logic with cofree exponential, from which one can cave out a model of classical linear logic by a kind of bi-orthogonality construction. Although the structures of an enriched presheaf category are usually rather complex, a morphism in the classical model can be expressed simply as a matrix of completely positive maps. The model inherits many desirable properties from the superoperator model. A conceptually interesting property is that our model has only a state whose “total probability” is bounded by 1, i.e. does not have a state where true and false each occur with probability 2 / 3 . Another convenient property inherited from the superoperator model is a ω CPO-enrichment. Remarkably, our model has a sufficient structure to interpret arbitrary recursive types by the standard domain theoretic technique. We introduce Quantum FPC , a quantum λ -calculus with recursive types, and prove that our model is a fully abstract model of Quantum FPC.
Selinger gave a superoperator model of a first-order quantum programming language and proved that it is fully definable and hence fully abstract. This paper proposes an extension of the superoperator model to higher-order programs based on modules over superoperators or, equivalently, enriched presheaves over the category of superoperators. The enriched presheaf category can be easily proved to be a model of intuitionistic linear logic with cofree exponential, from which one can cave out a model of classical linear logic by a kind of bi-orthogonality construction. Although the structures of an enriched presheaf category are usually rather complex, a morphism in the classical model can be expressed simply as a matrix of completely positive maps. The model inherits many desirable properties from the superoperator model. A conceptually interesting property is that our model has only a state whose “total probability” is bounded by 1, i.e. does not have a state where true and false each occur with probability 2 / 3 . Another convenient property inherited from the superoperator model is a ω CPO-enrichment. Remarkably, our model has a sufficient structure to interpret arbitrary recursive types by the standard domain theoretic technique. We introduce Quantum FPC , a quantum λ -calculus with recursive types, and prove that our model is a fully abstract model of Quantum FPC.
We introduce the monoidal closed category qCPO of quantum cpos, whose objects are "quantized" analogs of omega-complete partial orders (cpos). The category qCPO is enriched over the category CPO of cpos, and contains both CPO, and the opposite of the category FdAlg of finite-dimensional von Neumann algebras as monoidal subcategories. We use qCPO to construct a sound model for the quantum programming language Proto-Quipper-M (PQM) extended with term recursion, as well as a sound and computationally adequate model for the Linear/Non-Linear Fixpoint Calculus (LNL-FPC), which is both an extension of the Fixpoint Calculus (FPC) with linear types, and an extension of a circuit-free fragment of PQM that includes recursive types.
This paper studies the linear fragment of the programing language for quantum computation with classical control described in [Selinger, P. and B. Valiron, A lambda calculus for quantum computation with classical control, in: P. Urzyczyn, editor, Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Typed Lambda Calculi and Applications (TLCA 2005), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3461 (2005), pp. 354–368]. We sketch the language, and discuss equivalence of terms. We also describe a fully abstract denotational semantics based on completely positive maps.
Several domains [S. Abramsky. A Cook's tour of a simple quantum programming language. 3rd International Symposium on Domain Theory, Xi'an, China, May 2004; B. Coecke and K. Martin. A partial order on classical and quantum states. Technical report, PRG-RR-02-07, 2002; Ph. Jorrand and S. Perdrix. Towards a quantum calculus. In To appear in Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Quantum Programming Languages, ENTCS, 2006; P. Selinger. Towards a quantum programming language. Mathematical Structures in Computer Science, 14(4):527–586, 2004] can be used to define the semantics of quantum programs. Among them Abramsky [S. Abramsky. A Cook's tour of a simple quantum programming language. 3rd International Symposium on Domain Theory, Xi'an, China, May 2004] has introduced a semantics based on probabilistic power domains, whereas the one by Selinger [P. Selinger. Towards a quantum programming language. Mathematical Structures in Computer Science, 14(4):527–586, 2004] associates with every program a completely positive map. In this paper, we mainly introduce a semantical domain based on admissible transformations, i.e. multisets of linear operators. In order to establish a comparison with existing domains, we introduce a simple quantum imperative language (QIL), equipped with three different denotational semantics, called pure, observable, and admissible respectively. The pure semantics is a natural extension of probabilistic (classical) semantics and is similar to the semantics proposed by Abramsky [S. Abramsky. A Cook's tour of a simple quantum programming language. 3rd International Symposium on Domain Theory, Xi'an, China, May 2004]. The observable semantics, à la Selinger [P. Selinger. Towards a quantum programming language. Mathematical Structures in Computer Science, 14(4):527–586, 2004], associates with any program a superoperator over density matrices. Finally, we introduce an admissible semantics which associates with any program an admissible transformation. These semantics are not equivalent, but exact abstraction [P. Cousot. Types as abstract interpretations. In POPL, pages 316–331, 1997] or interpretation relations are established between them, leading to a hierarchy of quantum semantics.
This dissertation has two main parts. The first part deals with questions relating to Haghverdi and Scott's notion of partially traced categories. The main result is a representation theorem for such categories: we prove that every partially traced category can be faithfully embedded in a totally traced category. Also conversely, every monoidal subcategory of a totally traced category is partially traced, so this characterizes the partially traced categories completely. The main technique we use is based on Freyd's paracategories, along with a partial version of Joyal, Street, and Verity's Int construction. Along the way, we discuss some new examples of partially traced categories, mostly arising in the context of quantum computation. The second part deals with the construction of categorical models of higher-order quantum computation. We construct a concrete semantic model of Selinger and Valiron's quantum lambda calculus, which has been an open problem until now. We do this by considering presheaf categories over appropriate base categories arising from first-order quantum computation. The main technical ingredients are Day's convolution theory and Kelly and Freyd's notion of continuity of functors. We first give an abstract description of the properties required of the base categories for the model construction to work; then exhibit a specific example of base categories satisfying these properties.
The objective of this thesis is to develop a semantics for higher-order quantum information. Following the work done in the author's M.Sc. thesis, we study a lambda calculus for quantum computation with classical control. The language features two important properties. The first one, arising from the so-called no-cloning theorem of quantum computation, is the need for a distinction between duplicable and non-duplicable elements. For keeping track of duplicability at higher order, we use a type system inspired by the resource-sensitive linear logic. The second important aspect is the probability inherent to measurement, the only operation for retrieving classical data from quantum data. This forces us into choosing a reduction strategy for being able to define an operational semantics. We address the question of a denotational semantics in two respects. First, we restrict the study to the strictly linear aspect of the language. Doing so, we suppress the need for distinguishing between duplicable and non-duplicable elements and we can focus on the description of quantum features at higher order. Using the category of completely positive maps as a framework, we build a fully abstract denotational model of the strictly linear fragment of the language. The study of the full language is more demanding. For dealing with the probabilistic aspect of the language, we use a method inspired by Moggi and build a computational model with a distinction between values and computations. For the distinction between duplicability and non-duplicability in the calculus, we adapt Bierman's linear category, where the duplication is considered as a comonad with specific properties. The resulting model is what we call a linear category for duplication. Finally, we only focus on the fragment of the language that contains the aforementioned elements, and remove the classical Boolean and quantum Boolean features to get a generic computational linear lambda-calculus. In this idealized setting, we show that such a language have a full and complete interpretation in a linear category for duplication.
We describe categorical models of a circuit-based (quantum) functional programming language. We show that enriched categories play a crucial role. Following earlier work on QWire by Paykin et al., we consider both a simple first-order linear language for circuits, and a more powerful host language, such that the circuit language is embedded inside the host language. Our categorical semantics for the host language is standard, and involves cartesian closed categories and monads. We interpret the circuit language not in an ordinary category, but in a category that is enriched in the host category. We show that this structure is also related to linear/non-linear models. As an extended example, we recall an earlier result that the category of W*-algebras is dcpo-enriched, and we use this model to extend the circuit language with some recursive types.