Ross Duncan - Introduction to Categorical Quantum Mechanics

12:00
Thursday
21
Sep
2017
Speaker: 
Ross Duncan
Teams: 

Meeting room 482 is badged access: just tell the welcome you come for the seminar by giving the number of the room.

Context of the seminar: CAPP team is pleased to welcome two visitors:

  • Ross Duncan of Glasgow from 20 to 22 September
  • Dominic Horsman of Durham from 26 to 29 September.

There will be 4 seminars two on Wednesday 20 and 27 September in Néel more oriented for physicists and two on Thursday 21 and 28 at IMAG more computer-oriented:

Quantum computing is on the verge of taking over the world. But what about its semantics? What about formal methods for quantum computers? Do we really need to carry around all the machinery of Hilbert spaces, unitary transforms, etc etc in order to work on quantum computing? In fact the answer is no. By analysing the structure of quantum theory in terms of categorical theory we can uncover its essential algebraic structures and thus arrive at a formal theory of quantum computing, which can be presented in a simple graphical language. I’ll present a rational reconstruction of quantum theory in terms of primitive algebraic components inside an abstract monoidal category. (No knowledge of quantum computing or category theory will be required!)