Category theory and quantum mechanics

My last link to something categorical turned out to be pointing to a less-than-splended online resource. I hope this is rather better!

I’d heard tell of people interested in quantum foundations and quantum information getting entangled (see what I did there?) with category theory. And by chance, I  stumbled a few days ago across details of a course currently being run in Oxford. The course materials are a late draft of Categorical Quantum Mechanics by Chris Heunen and Jamie Vicary which has recently in fact been published as a book by OUP. This strikes me (in contrast I fear to that book I mentioned by Fong and Spivak) as extremely lucid and well-organized; and you don’t in fact have to read very far to see why quantum theorists might indeed be interested in monoidal categories as a mathematical tool. My QM is very very rusty; but if you have a smidgin of knowledge, this does seem worth dipping into, if only to get a glimpse from the sidelines about what the cool kids are up to …

The post Category theory and quantum mechanics appeared first on Logic Matters.