Categorifying the ZX-calculus

Abstract

We build a symmetric monoidal and compact closed bicategory by combining spans and cospans inside a topos. This can be used as a framework in which to study open networks and diagrammatic languages. We illustrate this framework with Coecke and Duncan's zx-calculus by constructing a bicategory with the natural numbers for 0-cells, the zx-calculus diagrams for 1-cells, and rewrite rules for 2-cells.Comment: In Proceedings QPL 2017, arXiv:1802.0973