On the Declarative Structure of Quantum Concepts
Jerzy Karczmarczuk · 2014
This tutorial documents our opinion that quantum concepts are declarative in nature, and that using imperative programming for quantum computation is a conceptual mismatch. We show how to construct a purely functional framework that describes a methodologically more correct (in our opinion) model of quantum entities. We refrain from representing explicitly, as data structures, such objects as states which cannot be analysed without being destroyed. We suggest that a declarative, purely functional approach gives formal tools that are more adequate for reasoning about the computational sense/contents of quantum entities, and in general of several mathematical constructs considered abstract. We show that this approach can be used in practice, and we suggest that it also can shed some light on the sense of the linearity -- the geometric property of vector spaces -- within the quantum framework.