Deriving Dagger Compactness

Abstract

Dagger compact structure is a common assumption in the study of physical process theories, but lacks a clear interpretation. Here we derive dagger compactness from more operational axioms on a category. We first characterise the structure in terms of a simple mapping of states to effects which we call a 'state dagger', before deriving this in any category with 'completely mixed' states and a form of purification, as in quantum theory.