Quantomatic: A proof assistant for diagrammatic reasoning

Abstract

Monoidal algebraic structures consist of operations that can have multiple outputs as well as multiple inputs, which have applications in many areas including categorical algebra, programming language semantics, representation theory, algebraic quantum information, and quantum groups. String diagrams provide a convenient graphical syntax for reasoning formally about such structures, while avoiding many of the technical challenges of a term-based approach. Quantomatic is a tool that supports the (semi-)automatic construction of equational proofs using string diagrams. We briefly outline the theoretical basis of Quantomatic’s rewriting engine, then give an overview of the core features and architecture and give a simple example project that computes normal forms for commutative bialgebras.