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Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
Jamie Vicary
University of Oxford
Project Title
Categorical Compositional Physics
Project Summary
Our most successful theories of physics, such as gravity and quantum mechanics, tell us a lot about what physical systems are made of, and how they behave. Exciting new ideas tell us that this may be the wrong approach: instead of asking what systems are made of, we should ask how they are composed from their parts. This is called 'compositional physics', and gives us new ways to describe what happens to a physical system. In this project, we will deepen the mathematical foundations for compositional physics, turning it into a fully-rigorous basis for describing physical systems, which can be applied to many different types of theory: from furniture and impossible objects, to biological systems and quantum gravity.
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