We develop a new framework of algebraic theories with linear parameters, and use it to analyze the equational reasoning principles of quantum computing and quantum programming languages. We use the framework as follows:
We develop a new framework of algebraic theories with linear parameters, and use it to analyze the equational reasoning principles of quantum computing and quantum programming languages. We use the framework as follows: we present a new elementary algebraic theory of quantum computation, built from unitary gates and measurement; we provide a completeness theorem or the elementary algebraic theory by relating it with a model from operator algebra; we extract an equational theory for a quantum programming language from the algebraic theory; we compare quantum computation with other local notions of computation by investigating variations on the algebraic theory.
The design and development of quantum programming languages (QPLs) is an important and active area of quantum computing. This paper addresses the problem of developing a standard methodology for verifying a QPL against major quantum computing concepts. We propose a framework dedicated to the meta-level analysis of QPLs, in particular, functional quantum languages. To this aim, we choose the Hybrid system as the tool in which to build our framework. Hybrid is a logical framework that supports higher-order abstract syntax, on top of which we develop an intuitionistic linear specification logic used for reasoning about QPLs. We provide a formal proof of some important meta-theoretic properties of this logic, and in addition, showcase a number of examples that can be tackled under the proposed framework.
The classical lambda calculus may be regarded both as a programming language and as a formal algebraic system for reasoning about computation. It provides a computational model equivalent to the Turing machine and continues to be of enormous benefit in the classical theory of computation. We propose that quantum computation, like its classical counterpart, may benefit from a version of the lambda calculus suitable for expressing and reasoning about quantum algorithms. In this paper we develop a quantum lambda calculus as an alternative model of quantum computation, which combines some of the benefits of both the quantum Turing machine and the quantum circuit models. The calculus turns out to be closely related to the linear lambda calculi used in the study of linear logic. We set up a computational model and an equational proof system for this calculus, and we argue that it is equivalent to the quantum Turing machine.