Frobenius Structures

A Frobenius structure is a monoid together with a comonoid, which satisfies an interaction law. Frobenius structures have a powerful graphical calculus and we prove a normal form theorem that makes them easy to work with. The Frobenius law itself is justified as a coherence property between daggers and closure of a category. We prove classification theorems for dagger Frobenius structures: in Hilb in terms of operator algebras and in Rel in terms of groupoids. Of special interest is the commutative case—as for Hilbert spaces this corresponds to a choice of basis—and provides a powerful tool to model classical information. We discuss phase gates and the state transfer protocol—as well as modules for Frobenius structures—and show how we can use these to model measurement, controlled operations and quantum teleportation.