Fast Automated Reasoning over String Diagrams using Multiway Causal Structure

05/10/2021

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by   Jonathan Gorard, et al.

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We introduce an intuitive algorithmic methodology for enacting automated rewriting of string diagrams within a general double-pushout (DPO) framework, in which the sequence of rewrites is chosen in accordance with the causal structure of the underlying diagrammatic calculus. The combination of the rewriting structure and the causal structure may be elegantly formulated as a weak 2-category equipped with both total and partial monoidal bifunctors, thus providing a categorical semantics for the full multiway evolution causal graph of a generic Wolfram model hypergraph rewriting system. As an illustrative example, we show how a special case of this algorithm enables highly efficient automated simplification of quantum circuits, as represented in the ZX-calculus.