The quantum instrument monad

Abstract

Monads are a ubiquitous structure in functional programming used for modelling computational effects. For example, the state monad models the effect of a computation interacting with a memory system. Here we introduce the quantum instrument monad $\mathcal{I}_\mathcal{A}$, which models the effect of a computation interacting with a quantum system with algebra of observables $\mathcal{A}$. It can be thought of as a noncommutative generalization of the state monad. We construct this quantum instrument monad in two versions: a finitary version on the category of sets and a measure-theoretic version on the category of measurable spaces (the latter under the assumption that $\mathcal{A}$ is a type I von Neumann algebra with separable predual). Both versions are strong monads. The construction of the measure-theoretic version is based on a new notion of integral of a quantum-operation-valued function against a state-valued measure.