English

LOv-Calculus: A Graphical Language for Linear Optical Quantum Circuits

Quantum Physics 2022-11-15 v1 Logic in Computer Science

Abstract

We introduce the LOv-calculus, a graphical language for reasoning about linear optical quantum circuits with so-called vacuum state auxiliary inputs. We present the axiomatics of the language and prove its soundness and completeness: two LOv-circuits represent the same quantum process if and only if one can be transformed into the other with the rules of the LOv-calculus. We give a confluent and terminating rewrite system to rewrite any polarisation-preserving LOv-circuit into a unique triangular normal form, inspired by the universal decomposition of Reck et al. (1994) for linear optical quantum circuits.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2204.11787,
  title  = {LOv-Calculus: A Graphical Language for Linear Optical Quantum Circuits},
  author = {Alexandre Clément and Nicolas Heurtel and Shane Mansfield and Simon Perdrix and Benoît Valiron},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.11787},
  year   = {2022}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-24T10:58:01.905Z