English

One rig to control them all

Logic in Computer Science 2026-05-04 v3 Category Theory Quantum Physics

Abstract

Controlled commands -- computations whose execution depends on a separate input -- play a central role in reversible Boolean circuits and quantum circuits. However, existing formalisms typically treat control only implicitly, entangled with other aspects of computation. From a semantic perspective, control is most naturally expressed in semisimple rig categories, which -- unlike standard circuit models such as props -- support both parallel and conditional composition. We present a construction that freely adjoins an explicit syntactic notion of control to a circuit theory specified as a suitable prop, subject to eight universally quantified equations. Our main result is that these equations are sound and complete for the intended semantics of control: the resulting theory satisfies a universal property, identifying it exactly as the circuit subtheory of the free semisimple rig completion. The proof combines coherence for rig categories with a new method based on induction over Gray codes. We illustrate the usefulness of the framework by showing that it simplifies several existing sound and complete axiomatisations of quantum circuits, isolating a small and conceptually clean set of generators and equations. In addition, the same equations yield a sound and complete axiomatisation of the multiply controlled Toffoli gate set, that is universal for reversible Boolean circuits.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.05032,
  title  = {One rig to control them all},
  author = {Chris Heunen and Robin Kaarsgaard and Louis Lemonnier},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.05032},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Accepted to LICS'26

R2 v1 2026-07-01T06:19:32.580Z