Concrete Foundations for Categorical Quantum Physics

An original presentation of Categorical Quantum Physics, in the line of Abramsky and Coecke, tries to introduce only objects and assumptions that are clearly relevant to Physics and does not assume compact closure. Adjoint arrows, tensor products and biproducts are the ingredients of this presentation. Tensor products are defined, up to a unitary arrow, by a universal property related to transformations of composite systems, not by assuming a monoidal structure. Entangled states of a tensor product define mixed states on the components of the tensor product. Coproducts that fit the adjoint structure are shown to be defined up to a unitary arrow and to provide biproducts. An abstract no-cloning result is proved.