VyZX: Formal Verification of a Graphical Quantum Language

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Lehmann, Adrian, Caldwell, Ben, Shah, Bhakti, Spencer, William, Rand, Robert
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Lehmann, Adrian
Caldwell, Ben
Shah, Bhakti
Spencer, William
Rand, Robert
author_facet Lehmann, Adrian
Caldwell, Ben
Shah, Bhakti
Spencer, William
Rand, Robert
contents Graphical languages are a convenient shorthand to represent computation, with rewrite rules relating one graph to another. In contrast, proof assistants rely heavily on inductive datatypes, particularly when giving semantics to embedded languages. This creates obstacles to formally reasoning about graphical languages, since imposing an inductive structure obfuscates the diagrammatic nature of graphical languages, along with their corresponding equational theories. To address this gap, we present VyZX, a verified library for reasoning about inductively defined graphical languages. These inductive constructs arise naturally from category-theoretic definitions. We developed VyZX to Verify the ZX-calculus, a graphical langauge for reasoning about quantum computation. The ZX-calculus comes with a collection of diagrammatic rewrite rules that preserve the graph's semantic interpretation. We show how inductive graphs in VyZX are used to prove the soundness of the ZX-calculus rewrite rules and apply them in practice using standard proof assistant techniques. We also provide an IDE-integrated visualizer for proof engineers to directly reason about diagrams in graphical form.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2311_11571
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle VyZX: Formal Verification of a Graphical Quantum Language
Lehmann, Adrian
Caldwell, Ben
Shah, Bhakti
Spencer, William
Rand, Robert
Programming Languages
Quantum Physics
Graphical languages are a convenient shorthand to represent computation, with rewrite rules relating one graph to another. In contrast, proof assistants rely heavily on inductive datatypes, particularly when giving semantics to embedded languages. This creates obstacles to formally reasoning about graphical languages, since imposing an inductive structure obfuscates the diagrammatic nature of graphical languages, along with their corresponding equational theories. To address this gap, we present VyZX, a verified library for reasoning about inductively defined graphical languages. These inductive constructs arise naturally from category-theoretic definitions. We developed VyZX to Verify the ZX-calculus, a graphical langauge for reasoning about quantum computation. The ZX-calculus comes with a collection of diagrammatic rewrite rules that preserve the graph's semantic interpretation. We show how inductive graphs in VyZX are used to prove the soundness of the ZX-calculus rewrite rules and apply them in practice using standard proof assistant techniques. We also provide an IDE-integrated visualizer for proof engineers to directly reason about diagrams in graphical form.
title VyZX: Formal Verification of a Graphical Quantum Language
topic Programming Languages
Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.11571