Purity through Factorisation

Abstract

We give a construction that identifies the collection of pure processes (i.e. those which are deterministic, or without randomness) within a theory containing both pure and mixed processes. Working in the framework of symmetric monoidal categories, we define a pure subcategory. This definition arises elegantly from the categorical notion of a weak factorisation system. Our construction gives the expected result in several examples, both quantum and classical.