Fantastic Quantum Theories and Where to Find Them

Abstract

We present a uniform framework for the treatment of a large class of toy models of quantum theory. Specifically, we will be interested in theories of wavefunctions valued in commutative involutive semirings, and which give rise to some semiring-based notion of classical non-determinism via the Born rule. The models obtained with our construction possess many of the familiar structures used in Categorical Quantum Mechanics. We also provide a bestiary of increasingly exotic examples: some well known, such as real quantum theory and relational quantum theory; some less known, such as hyperbolic quantum theory, p-adic quantum theory and "parity quantum theory"; and some entirely new, such as "finite-field quantum theory" and "tropical quantum theory". As a further bonus, the measurement scenarios arising within these theories can be studied using the sheaf-theoretic framework for non-locality and contextuality. Their computational complexity can similarly be studied within existing frameworks for affine and unitary circuits over commutative semirings.