Quantum Gates from Wolfram Model Multiway Rewriting Systems

Abstract

We show how representations of finite-dimensional quantum operators can be constructed using nondeterministic rewriting systems. In particular, we investigate Wolfram model multiway rewriting systems based on string substitutions. Multiway systems were proposed by S. Wolfram as generic model systems for multicomputational processes, emphasizing their significance as a foundation for modeling complexity, nondeterminism, and branching structures of measurement outcomes. Here, we investigate a specific class of multiway systems based on cyclic character strings with a neighborhood constraint - the latter called Leibnizian strings. We show that such strings exhibit a Fermi-Dirac distribution for expectation values of occupation numbers of character neighborhoods. A Leibnizian string serves as an abstraction of a $N$-fermion system. A multiway system of these strings encodes causal relations between rewriting events in a nondeterministic manner. The collection of character strings realizes a $\mathbb{Z}$-module with a symmetric $\mathbb{Z}$-bilinear form. For discrete spaces, this generalizes the notion of an inner product over a vector field. This admits a discrete analogue of the path integral and a $S$-matrix for multiway systems of Leibnizian strings. The elements of this $S$-matrix yield transition amplitudes between states of the multiway system based on an action defined over a sequence of Leibnizian strings. We then show that these $S$-matrices give explicit representations of quantum gates for qubits and qudits, and also circuits composed of such gates. We find that, as formal models of nondeterministic computation, rewriting systems of Leibnizian strings with causal structure encode representations of the CNOT, $π/8$, and Hadamard gates. Hence, using multiway systems one can represent quantum circuits for qubits.