Imperative Quantum Programming with Ownership and Borrowing in Guppy
Programming Languages
2025-10-16 v1 Software Engineering
Quantum Physics
Abstract
Linear types enforce no-cloning and no-deleting theorems in functional quantum programming. However, in imperative quantum programming, they have not gained widespread adoption. This work aims to develop a quantum type system that combines ergonomic linear typing with imperative semantics and maintains safety guarantees. All ideas presented here have been implemented in Quantinuum's Guppy programming language.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2510.13082,
title = {Imperative Quantum Programming with Ownership and Borrowing in Guppy},
author = {Mark Koch and Agustín Borgna and Craig Roy and Alan Lawrence and Kartik Singhal and Seyon Sivarajah and Ross Duncan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.13082},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
Presented at the Fifth International Workshop on Programming Languages for Quantum Computing (PLanQC 2025)