A complete graphical calculus for Spekkens' toy bit theory (Q262336)

Spekkens' toy theory is a local hidden variable theory that nevertheless displays many of the same properties and effects as quantum mechanics. Here, the authors only consider the toy theory for the simplest non-trivial system: the toy bit theory. Graphical languages provide an intuitive and high-level way of reasoning. One of the reasons for this is the fact that they allow parallel and sequential composition to be denoted along two different dimensions. In this paper, the authors define a graphical calculus for Spekkens' toy bit theory and they show that it has the full power of any formalism for analyzing the toy theory. They show that this language fully describes Spekkens' toy theory and in particular, that it is complete: meaning any equality that can be derived using other formalisms can also be derived entirely graphically. This graphical calculus is modeled after the \(ZX\)-calculus, a similar universal, sound, and complete graphical calculus for pure state qubit stabilizer quantum mechanics with post-selected measurements. Therefore, similarities and differences between stabilizer quantum mechanics and the toy bit theory can be analyzed graphically. As the authors have only considered pure state qubit stabilizer quantum mechanics and the maximal knowledge fragment of Spekkens' toy bit theory, a next step would be to extend the graphical calculi to mixed states in the quantum case and states of less-than-maximal knowledge in the toy theory.