Full formal descriptions of algorithms making use of quantum principles must take into account both quantum and classical computing components and assemble them so that they communicate and cooperate.Moreover, to model concurrent and distributed quantum computations, as well as quantum communication protocols, quantum to quantum communications which move qubits physically from one place to another must also be taken into account. Inspired by classical process algebras, which provide a framework for modeling cooperating computations, a process algebraic notation is defined, which provides a homogeneous style to formal descriptions of concurrent and distributed computations comprising both quantum and classical parts.Based upon an operational semantics which makes sure that quantum objects, operations and communications operate according to the postulates of quantum mechanics, a probabilistic branching bisimulation is defined among processes considered as having the same behavior.
Full formal descriptions of algorithms making use of quantum principles must take into account both quantum and classical computing components and assemble them so that they communicate and cooperate.Moreover, to model concurrent and distributed quantum computations, as well as quantum communication protocols, quantum to quantum communications which move qubits physically from one place to another must also be taken into account. Inspired by classical process algebras, which provide a framework for modeling cooperating computations, a process algebraic notation is defined, which provides a homogeneous style to formal descriptions of concurrent and distributed computations comprising both quantum and classical parts.Based upon an operational semantics which makes sure that quantum objects, operations and communications operate according to the postulates of quantum mechanics, a probabilistic branching bisimulation is defined among processes considered as having the same behavior.
Full formal descriptions of algorithms making use of quantum principles must take into account both quantum and classical computing components, as well as communications between these components. Moreover, to model concurrent and distributed quantum computations and quantum communication protocols, communications over quantum channels that move qubits physically from one place to another must also be taken into account. Inspired by classical process algebras, which provide a framework for modelling cooperating computations, a process algebraic notation is defined. This notation provides a homogeneous style for formal descriptions of concurrent and distributed computations comprising both quantum and classical parts. Based upon an operational semantics that makes sure that quantum objects, operations and communications operate according to the postulates of quantum mechanics, an equivalence is defined among process states considered as having the same behaviour. This equivalence is a probabilistic branching bisimulation. From this relation, an equivalence on processes is defined. However, it is not a congruence because it is not preserved by parallel composition.
Full formal descriptions of algorithms making use of quantum principles must take into account both quantum and classical computing components and assemble them so that they communicate and cooperate. Moreover, to model concurrent and distributed quantum computations, as well as quantum communication protocols, quantum to quantum communications which move qubits physically from one place to another must also be taken into account. Inspired by classical process algebras, which provide a framework for modeling cooperating computations, a process algebraic notation is defined, named QPAlg for Quantum Process Algebra, which provides a homogeneous style to formal descriptions of concurrent and distributed computations comprising both quantum and classical parts. On the quantum side, QPAlg provides quantum variables, operations on quantum variables (unitary operators and measurement observables), as well as new forms of communications involving the quantum world. The operational semantics makes sure that these quantum objects, operations and communications operate according to the postulates of quantum mechanics.
Quantum computations operate in the quantum world. For their results to be useful in any way, there is an intrinsic necessity of cooperation and communication controlled by the classical world. As a consequence, full formal descriptions of algorithms making use of quantum principles must take into account both quantum and classical computing components and assemble them so that they communicate and cooperate. This paper aims at defining a high level language allowing the description of classical and quantum programming, and their cooperation. Since process algebras provide a framework to model cooperating computations and have well defined semantics, they have been chosen as a basis for this language. Starting with a classical process algebra, this paper explains how to transform it for including quantum computation. The result is a quantum process algebra with its operational semantics, which can be used to fully describe quantum algorithms in their classical context.
Modeling and reasoning about concurrent quantum systems is very important for both distributed quantum computing and quantum protocol verification. As a consequence, a general framework formally describing communication and concurrency in complex quantum systems is necessary. For this purpose, we propose a model named qCCS. It is a natural quantum extension of classical value-passing CCS which can deal with input and output of quantum states, and unitary transformations and measurements on quantum systems. The operational semantics of qCCS is given in terms of probabilistic labeled transition system. This semantics has many different features compared with the proposals in the available literature in order to describe the input and output of quantum systems which are possibly correlated with other components. Based on this operational semantics, the notions of strong probabilistic bisimulation and weak probabilistic bisimulation between quantum processes are introduced. Furthermore, some properties of these two probabilistic bisimulations, such as congruence under various combinators, are examined.
We introduce an algebra qCCS of pure quantum processes in which communications by moving quantum states physically are allowed and computations are modeled by super-operators, but no classical data is explicitly involved. An operational semantics of qCCS is presented in terms of (nonprobabilistic) labeled transition systems. Strong bisimulation between processes modeled in qCCS is defined, and its fundamental algebraic properties are established, including uniqueness of the solutions of recursive equations. To model sequential computation in qCCS, a reduction relation between processes is defined. By combining reduction relation and strong bisimulation we introduce the notion of strong reduction-bisimulation, which is a device for observing interaction of computation and communication in quantum systems. Finally, a notion of strong approximate bisimulation (equivalently, strong bisimulation distance) and its reduction counterpart are introduced. It is proved that both approximate bisimilarity and approximate reduction-bisimilarity are preserved by various constructors of quantum processes. This provides us with a formal tool for observing robustness of quantum processes against inaccuracy in the implementation of its elementary gates.
Quantum cryptographic systems have been commercially available, with a striking advantage over classical systems that their security and ability to detect the presence of eavesdropping are provable based on the principles of quantum mechanics. On the other hand, quantum protocol designers may commit much more faults than classical protocol designers since human intuition is much better adapted to the classical world than the quantum world. To offer formal techniques for modeling and verification of quantum protocols, several quantum extensions of process algebra have been proposed. One of the most serious issues in quantum process algebra is to discover a quantum generalization of the notion of bisimulation, which lies in a central position in process algebra, preserved by parallel composition in the presence of quantum entanglement, which has no counterpart in classical computation. Quite a few versions of bisimulation have been defined for quantum processes in the literature, but in the best case they are only proved to be preserved by parallel composition of purely quantum processes where no classical communications are involved. Many quantum cryptographic protocols, however, employ the LOCC (Local Operations and Classical Communications) scheme, where classical communications must be explicitly specified. So, a notion of bisimulation preserved by parallel composition in the circumstance of both classical and quantum communications is crucial for process algebra approach to verification of quantum cryptographic protocols. In this paper we introduce a novel notion of bisimulation for quantum processes and prove that it is congruent with respect to various process algebra combinators including parallel composition even when both classical and quantum communications are present. We also establish some basic algebraic laws for this bisimulation. In particular, we prove uniqueness of the solutions to recursive equations of quantum processes, which provides a powerful proof technique for verifying complex quantum protocols.