About me:
I am a research fellow in the MSP group in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences. I am interested in quantum computation, the foundations of quantum mechanics, category theory and its application in computer science, logic and physics, and graphical techniques for reasoning.
In my other job, I am Head of Quantum Software at Cambridge Quantum Computing Ltd.
I am the co-inventor (with Bob Coecke) of the ZX-calculus, a string diagrammatic language for quantum systems. I initiated the quantomatic project (with Lucas Dixon and Aleks Kissinger), a graphical theorem prover, intended for reasoning about quantum systems.
I am a member of the editorial board of the open access journal Compositionality. Please feel free to contact me if you wish to submit an article to the journal -- only your best stuff though, no rubbish!
I am a member of the steering committee of the Symposium on Compositional Structures and I help organise the semi-regular workshop series Categories, Physics and Logic aka CLAP. I am also involved with Quantum Information Scotland (aka QUISCO) and a regular participant in the Scottish Category Theory Seminar, aka ScotCats.
I was the co-organiser and co-chair of Quantum Physics and Logic 2016, which took place in Glasgow 6-10 June 2016. The proceedings volume was published by EPTCS and is freely available here. Previously, I organised the 9th Quantum Physics and Logic workshop, which took place in Brussels 10-12 October 2012. The proceedings volume was published by EPTCS and is freely available here.
Talks
Some talks I have given can be found here.
Latest Preprints
- Classifying all mutually unbiased bases in Rel, Julia Evans, Ross Duncan, Alex Lang, Prakash Panangaden arXiv:0909.4453
Publications
- Verifying the smallest interesting colour code with Quantomatic, Liam Garvie, Ross Duncan, Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science 266, pp. 147-163. DOI: 10.4204/EPTCS.266.10 arXiv:1706.02717
- Interacting Frobenius Algebras are Hopf, Ross Duncan and Kevin Dunne, Logic in Computer Science 2016, ACM, 2016. DOI: 10.1145/2933575.2934550 arXiv:1601.04964.
- Generalised Compositional Theories and Diagrammatic Reasoning, Bob Coecke, Ross Duncan, Aleks Kissinger and Quanlong Wang in "Quantum Theory: Informational Foundations and Foils", G. Chirabella and R. Spekkens (eds), pp 309-306, Fundamental Theories of Physics volume 181, Springer, 2016. volume DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-7303-4 arXiv:1506.03632
- Verifying the Steane code with Quantomatic, Ross Duncan and Maxime Lucas, Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science 171, pp. 33–49. DOI: 10.4204/EPTCS.171.4
- Pivoting makes the ZX-calculus complete for real stabilizers, Ross Duncan and Simon Perdrix, Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science 171, pp. 50–62. DOI: 10.4204/EPTCS.171.5
- Symmetry, Compact Closure and Dagger Compactness for Categories of Convex Operational Models, Barnum H., R. Duncan and A. Wilce., Journal of Philosophical Logic, 42 (2013) 3, Springer DOI: 10.1007/s10992-013-9280-8
- Tutorial: Graphical Calculus for Quantum Circuits, Coecke, B. and R. Duncan, in Reversible Computation, 4th International Workshop, RC 2012, Lecture Notes in Computer Science vol 7581, Springer, 2013 DOI:10.1007/978-3-642-36315-3_1
- Strong complementarity and non-locality in categorical quantum mechanics, Coecke, B., R. Duncan, A. Kissinger, and Q. Wang, in Logic in Computer Science 2012, IEEE Computer Society, 2012 DOI:10.1109/LICS.2012.35
- A Graphical Approach to Measurement-Based Quantum Computing, Ross Duncan, in C. Heunen, M. Sadrzadeh and E. Greffenstette (eds), Quantum Physics and Linguistics: A Compositional, Diagrammatic Discourse, Oxford University Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780199646296. Arxiv: 1203.6242
- Interacting Quantum Observables: Categorical Algebra and Diagrammatics, Bob Coecke and Ross Duncan, New J. Phys. 13 (2011) 043016 DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/13/4/043016 PDF
- Rewriting measurement-based quantum computations with generalised flow, Ross Duncan and Simon Perdrix, in Abramsky et al., (ed.s) Proceedings of ICALP 2010 Part II, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6199, pp285-296, Springer, 2010. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-14162-1_24 PDF
- Open Graphs and Computational Reasoning, Lucas Dixon,Ross Duncan and Aleks Kissinger, Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science, vol 26, pp169-180, 2010 DOI: 10.4204/EPTCS.26.16 PDF
- Generalised Proof-Nets for Compact Categories with Biproducts, Ross Duncan, in Gay and Mackie (ed.s) Semantic Techniques in Quantum Computation, Cambridge University Press, 2010, ISBN: 9780521513746 arXiv:0903.5154 PDF
- Graphical Reasoning in Compact Closed Categories for Quantum Computation, Lucas Dixon and Ross Duncan, Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence vol 56 (1) pp23-42. 2009, DOI: 10.1007/s10472-009-9141-x PDF
- Graph States and the necessity of the Euler decoposition, Ross Duncan and Simon Perdrix, in Ambos-Spies et al., (ed.s) Proceedings of CIE 2009, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5635, pp285-296, Springer, 2009. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-03073-4 PDF
- Interacting Quantum Observables, Bob Coecke and Ross Duncan , in Aceto et al., (ed.s) Proceedings of ICALP 2008 Part II, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5126, pp209-310, Springer, 2008. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-70583-3_25 PDF NOTE: this paper is superceded by the paper above with (almost) the same name.
- A Categorical Quantum Logic, Samson Abramsky and Ross Duncan Mathematical Structures in Computer Science, vol 16 (3) pp469-489, 2006, DOI: 10.1017/S0960129506005275 PDF
My Thesis
My thesis was the runner-up for the British Computer Society's prize, Distinguished Dissertations in Theoretical Computer Science. You can dowload it here: Types for Quantum Computing
Contact me:
- Email : ross.duncan@strath.ac.uk
- Telephone : +44 141 548 3301
- Post: Ross Duncan
Department of Computer and Information Science
University of Strathclyde
Livingston Tower
26 Richmond St.
Glasgow G1 1XH
UK