Ricercar: a language for describing and rewriting reversible circuits with ancillae and its permutation semantics

Michael Kirkedal Thomsen*, Robin Kaarsgaard, Mathias Soeken

*Corresponding author for this work
5 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Previously, Soeken and Thomsen presented six basic semantics-preserving rules for rewriting reversible logic circuits, defined using the well-known diagrammatic notation of Feynman. While this notation is both useful and intuitive for describing reversible circuits, its shortcomings in generality complicates the specification of more sophisticated and abstract rewriting rules. In this paper, we introduce Ricercar, a general textual description language for reversible logic circuits designed explicitly to support rewriting. Taking the not gate and the identity gate as primitives, this language allows circuits to be constructed using control gates, sequential composition, and ancillae, through a notion of ancilla scope. We show how the above-mentioned rewriting rules are defined in this language, and extend the rewriting system with five additional rules to introduce and modify ancilla scope. This treatment of ancillae addresses the limitations of the original rewriting system in rewriting circuits with ancillae in the general case. To set Ricercar on a theoretical foundation, we also define a permutation semantics over symmetric groups and show how the operations over permutations as transposition relate to the semantics of the language.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationReversible Computation : 7th International Conference, RC 2015, Grenoble, France, July 16-17, 2015, Proceedings
EditorsJean Krivine, Jean-Bernard Stefani
Number of pages16
PublisherSpringer
Publication date2015
Pages200-215
ISBN (Print)978-3-319-20859-6
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-319-20860-2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2015
Event7th International Conference on Reversible Computation, RC 2015 - Grenoble, France
Duration: 16 Jul 201517 Jul 2015

Conference

Conference7th International Conference on Reversible Computation, RC 2015
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityGrenoble
Period16/07/201517/07/2015
SeriesLecture notes in computer science
Volume9138
ISSN0302-9743

Keywords

  • Ancillae
  • Circuit equivalence
  • Permutation
  • Reversible logic
  • Term rewriting

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Ricercar: a language for describing and rewriting reversible circuits with ancillae and its permutation semantics'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this