A lambda calculus for quantum computation

A lambda calculus for quantum computation(het.brown.edu)

114 points by jessup 8 years ago | 10 comments

Very cool! The examples on this page are Scheme implementations of the Examples section of his 2003 paper[0] linked on the page. He goes over the derivation of the programs for these examples in more detail in the paper.

[0]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0307150.pdf

ssivark 8 years ago |

Interesting resource. Given that "no-cloning" [1] seems to be a fundamental property of quantum mechanics, I would expect any relevant programming language to enforce linear types i.e. "use exactly once" constraint.

[1]: https://quantiki.org/wiki/no-cloning-theorem

fovc 8 years ago | |

The linked paper says in the abstract:

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.

ssivark 8 years ago | | |

Yes, I was placing that statement in context.

naasking 8 years ago |

A brief survey of quantum programming languages, http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1618

A functional quantum programming language, http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/251

A Quantum Lambda Calculus, http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3769

vtomole 8 years ago | |

That survey was written over 10 years ago. The field of quantum computation has grown by leaps and bounds since then. Modern quantum programming languages like pyQuil [0], Qiskit [1], and Q# [2] are designed to address the progress of quantum computing; like the fact that we now have small devices with 10s of qubits.

[0]: http://pyquil.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

[1]: https://www.qiskit.org/

[2]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/quantum/quantum-qr-intro?vi...

adamisntdead 8 years ago | | |

There is an abundance of tools for reasearchers now, each with specific purposes. Libraries such as libquantum have different uses to libraries such as qiskit.

kuwze 8 years ago |

That's awesome! Also D-Wave uses Common Lisp[0].

[0]: https://cjelupton.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/quantum-computing...

vtomole 8 years ago | |

D-Wave doesn't have a quantum computer. They have a quantum annealer.