Towards a formally verified functional quantum programming language

This thesis looks at the development of a framework for a functional quantum programming language. The framework is first developed in Haskell, looking at how a monadic structure can be used to explicitly deal with the side-effects inherent in the measurement of quantum systems, and goes on to look...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Green, Alexander S.
Format: Thesis (University of Nottingham only)
Language:English
Published: 2010
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/11457/
Description
Summary:This thesis looks at the development of a framework for a functional quantum programming language. The framework is first developed in Haskell, looking at how a monadic structure can be used to explicitly deal with the side-effects inherent in the measurement of quantum systems, and goes on to look at how a dependently-typed reimplementation in Agda gives us the basis for a formally verified quantum programming language. The two implementations are not in themselves fully developed quantum programming languages, as they are embedded in their respective parent languages, but are a major step towards the development of a full formally verified, functional quantum programming language. Dubbed the “Quantum IO Monad”, this framework is designed following a structural approach as given by a categorical model of quantum computation.