From Symmetric Pattern-Matching to Quantum Control

Abstract

One perspective on quantum algorithms is that they are classical algorithms having access to a special kind of memory with exotic properties. This perspective suggests that, even in the case of quantum algorithms, the control flow notions of sequencing, conditionals, loops, and recursion are entirely classical. There is however, another notion of control flow, that is itself quantum. The notion of quantum conditional expression is reasonably well-understood: the execution of the two expressions becomes itself a superposition of executions. The quantum counterpart of loops and recursion is however not believed to be meaningful in its most general form.

Publication
Foundations of Software Science and Computation Structures, FoSSaCS 2018