Chris Heunen’s research while affiliated with University of Edinburgh and other places

Uncomputation is a feature in quantum programming that allows the programmer to discard a value without losing quantum information, and that allows the compiler to reuse resources. Whereas quantum information has to be treated linearly by the type system, automatic uncomputation enables the programmer to treat it affinely to some extent. Automatic uncomputation requires a substructural type system between linear and affine, a subtlety that has only been captured by existing languages in an ad hoc way. We extend the Rust type system to the quantum setting to give a uniform framework for automatic uncomputation called Qurts (pronounced quartz). Specifically, we parameterise types by lifetimes, permitting them to be affine during their lifetime, while being restricted to linear use outside their lifetime. We also provide two operational semantics: one based on classical simulation, and one that does not depend on any specific uncomputation strategy.

We consider sets with infinite addition, called $\Sigma$-monoids, and contribute to their literature in three ways. First, our definition subsumes those from previous works and allows us to relate them in terms of adjuctions between their categories. In particular, we discuss $\Sigma$-monoids with additive inverses. Second, we show that every Hausdorff commutative monoid is a $\Sigma$-monoid, and that there is a free Hausdorff commutative monoid for each $\Sigma$-monoid. Third, we prove that $\Sigma$-monoids have well-defined tensor products, unlike topological abelian groups.

Freyd categories provide a semantics for first-order effectful programming languages by capturing the two different orders of evaluation for products. We enrich Freyd categories in a duoidal category, which provides a new, third choice of parallel composition. Duoidal categories have two monoidal structures which account for the sequential and parallel compositions. The traditional setting is recovered as a full coreflective subcategory for a judicious choice of duoidal category. We give several worked examples of this uniform framework, including the parameterised state monad, basic separation semantics for resources, and interesting cases of change of enrichment.

We extend the Stone duality between topological spaces and locales to include order: there is an adjunction between the category of preordered topological spaces satisfying the so-called open cone condition, and the newly defined category of ordered locales. The adjunction restricts to an equivalence of categories between spatial ordered locales and sober $T_0$-ordered spaces with open cones.

Freyd categories provide a semantics for first-order effectful programming languages by capturing the two different orders of evaluation for products. We enrich Freyd categories in a duoidal category, which provides a new, third choice of parallel composition. Duoidal categories have two monoidal structures which account for the sequential and parallel compositions. The traditional setting is recovered as a full coreflective subcategory for a judicious choice of duoidal category. We give several worked examples of this uniform framework, including the parameterised state monad, basic separation semantics for resources, and interesting cases of change of enrichment

The category of Hilbert spaces and linear contractions is characterised by elementary categorical properties that do not refer to probabilities, complex numbers, norm, continuity, convexity, or dimension.

Significance Hilbert spaces and their operators are the mathematical foundation of quantum mechanics. The problem of reconstructing this foundation from first principles has been open for nearly a century. What is mathematically special about Hilbert spaces and their operators? This paper gives a categorical axiomatization. Unlike previous partial results of this type, the axioms do not presuppose probabilities, complex amplitudes, or continuity and are not limited to finite dimension.

A while loop tests a termination condition on every iteration. On a quantum computer, such measurements perturb the evolution of the algorithm. We define a while loop primitive using weak measurements, offering a trade-off between the perturbation caused and the amount of information gained per iteration. This trade-off is adjusted with a parameter set by the programmer. We provide sufficient conditions that let us determine, with arbitrarily high probability, a worst-case estimate of the number of iterations the loop will run for. As an example, we solve Grover's search problem using a while loop and prove the quadratic quantum speed-up is maintained.