Relating toy models of quantum computation: comprehension, complementarity and dagger mix autonomous categories

TL;DR

This paper combines category theory and toy models of quantum computation to develop a new categorical framework called dagger mix autonomous categories, capturing quantum features like complementarity and propositions.

Contribution

It introduces the comprehension construction to extend toy models, resulting in a novel categorical structure that unifies quantum features within a broad mathematical framework.

Findings

Models share the same categorical structure.

Extension of test space models with comprehension construction.

Dagger mix autonomous categories naturally arise in quantum computation.

Abstract

Toy models have been used to separate important features of quantum computation from the rich background of the standard Hilbert space model. Category theory, on the other hand, is a general tool to separate components of mathematical structures, and analyze one layer at a time. It seems natural to combine the two approaches, and several authors have already pursued this idea. We explore *categorical comprehension construction* as a tool for adding features to toy models. We use it to comprehend quantum propositions and probabilities within the basic model of finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. We also analyze complementary quantum observables over the category of sets and relations. This leads into the realm of *test spaces*, a well-studied model. We present one of many possible extensions of this model, enabled by the comprehension construction. Conspicuously, all models obtained in this way carry the same categorical structure, *extending* the familiar dagger compact framework with the complementation operations. We call the obtained structure *dagger mix autonomous*, because it extends mix autonomous categories, popular in computer science, in a similar way like dagger compact structure extends compact categories. Dagger mix autonomous categories seem to arise quite naturally in quantum computation, as soon as complementarity is viewed as a part of the global structure.