129,235 research outputs found
Canonical Maps
Categorical foundations and set-theoretical foundations are sometimes presented as alternative foundational schemes. So far, the literature has mostly focused on the weaknesses of the categorical foundations. We want here to concentrate on what we take to be one of its strengths: the explicit identification of so-called canonical maps and their role in mathematics. Canonical maps play a central role in contemporary mathematics and although some are easily defined by set-theoretical tools, they all appear systematically in a categorical framework. The key element here is the systematic nature of these maps in a categorical framework and I suggest that, from that point of view, one can see an architectonic of mathematics emerging clearly. Moreover, they force us to reconsider the nature of mathematical knowledge itself. Thus, to understand certain fundamental aspects of mathematics, category theory is necessary (at least, in the present state of mathematics)
Pictures of complete positivity in arbitrary dimension
Two fundamental contributions to categorical quantum mechanics are presented.
First, we generalize the CP-construction, that turns any dagger compact
category into one with completely positive maps, to arbitrary dimension.
Second, we axiomatize when a given category is the result of this construction.Comment: Final versio
Lambek vs. Lambek: Functorial Vector Space Semantics and String Diagrams for Lambek Calculus
The Distributional Compositional Categorical (DisCoCat) model is a
mathematical framework that provides compositional semantics for meanings of
natural language sentences. It consists of a computational procedure for
constructing meanings of sentences, given their grammatical structure in terms
of compositional type-logic, and given the empirically derived meanings of
their words. For the particular case that the meaning of words is modelled
within a distributional vector space model, its experimental predictions,
derived from real large scale data, have outperformed other empirically
validated methods that could build vectors for a full sentence. This success
can be attributed to a conceptually motivated mathematical underpinning, by
integrating qualitative compositional type-logic and quantitative modelling of
meaning within a category-theoretic mathematical framework.
The type-logic used in the DisCoCat model is Lambek's pregroup grammar.
Pregroup types form a posetal compact closed category, which can be passed, in
a functorial manner, on to the compact closed structure of vector spaces,
linear maps and tensor product. The diagrammatic versions of the equational
reasoning in compact closed categories can be interpreted as the flow of word
meanings within sentences. Pregroups simplify Lambek's previous type-logic, the
Lambek calculus, which has been extensively used to formalise and reason about
various linguistic phenomena. The apparent reliance of the DisCoCat on
pregroups has been seen as a shortcoming. This paper addresses this concern, by
pointing out that one may as well realise a functorial passage from the
original type-logic of Lambek, a monoidal bi-closed category, to vector spaces,
or to any other model of meaning organised within a monoidal bi-closed
category. The corresponding string diagram calculus, due to Baez and Stay, now
depicts the flow of word meanings.Comment: 29 pages, pending publication in Annals of Pure and Applied Logi
Globular: an online proof assistant for higher-dimensional rewriting
This article introduces Globular, an online proof assistant for the
formalization and verification of proofs in higher-dimensional category theory.
The tool produces graphical visualizations of higher-dimensional proofs,
assists in their construction with a point-and- click interface, and performs
type checking to prevent incorrect rewrites. Hosted on the web, it has a low
barrier to use, and allows hyperlinking of formalized proofs directly from
research papers. It allows the formalization of proofs from logic, topology and
algebra which are not formalizable by other methods, and we give several
examples
Types and forgetfulness in categorical linguistics and quantum mechanics
The role of types in categorical models of meaning is investigated. A general
scheme for how typed models of meaning may be used to compare sentences,
regardless of their grammatical structure is described, and a toy example is
used as an illustration. Taking as a starting point the question of whether the
evaluation of such a type system 'loses information', we consider the
parametrized typing associated with connectives from this viewpoint.
The answer to this question implies that, within full categorical models of
meaning, the objects associated with types must exhibit a simple but subtle
categorical property known as self-similarity. We investigate the category
theory behind this, with explicit reference to typed systems, and their
monoidal closed structure. We then demonstrate close connections between such
self-similar structures and dagger Frobenius algebras. In particular, we
demonstrate that the categorical structures implied by the polymorphically
typed connectives give rise to a (lax unitless) form of the special forms of
Frobenius algebras known as classical structures, used heavily in abstract
categorical approaches to quantum mechanics.Comment: 37 pages, 4 figure
Convergence and quantale-enriched categories
Generalising Nachbin's theory of "topology and order", in this paper we
continue the study of quantale-enriched categories equipped with a compact
Hausdorff topology. We compare these -categorical compact
Hausdorff spaces with ultrafilter-quantale-enriched categories, and show that
the presence of a compact Hausdorff topology guarantees Cauchy completeness and
(suitably defined) codirected completeness of the underlying quantale enriched
category
Geometry of abstraction in quantum computation
Quantum algorithms are sequences of abstract operations, performed on
non-existent computers. They are in obvious need of categorical semantics. We
present some steps in this direction, following earlier contributions of
Abramsky, Coecke and Selinger. In particular, we analyze function abstraction
in quantum computation, which turns out to characterize its classical
interfaces. Some quantum algorithms provide feasible solutions of important
hard problems, such as factoring and discrete log (which are the building
blocks of modern cryptography). It is of a great practical interest to
precisely characterize the computational resources needed to execute such
quantum algorithms. There are many ideas how to build a quantum computer. Can
we prove some necessary conditions? Categorical semantics help with such
questions. We show how to implement an important family of quantum algorithms
using just abelian groups and relations.Comment: 29 pages, 42 figures; Clifford Lectures 2008 (main speaker Samson
Abramsky); this version fixes a pstricks problem in a diagra
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