Purity through Factorisation

Oscar Cunningham
(University of Oxford)
Chris Heunen
(University of Edinburgh)

We give a construction that identifies the collection of pure processes (i.e. those which are deterministic, or without randomness) within a theory containing both pure and mixed processes. Working in the framework of symmetric monoidal categories, we define a pure subcategory. This definition arises elegantly from the categorical notion of a weak factorisation system. Our construction gives the expected result in several examples, both quantum and classical.

In Bob Coecke and Aleks Kissinger: Proceedings 14th International Conference on Quantum Physics and Logic (QPL 2017), Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 3-7 July 2017, Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science 266, pp. 315–328.
Published: 27th February 2018.

ArXived at: https://dx.doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.266.20 bibtex PDF
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