Robin Kaarsgaard

I am associate professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at University of Southern Denmark. There, I am associated with ACP and the Centre for Quantum Mathematics.

My research focuses on quantum foundations and quantum programming languages (especially their semantics), and more broadly on the applications of category theory in computer science.

News

Feb 17, 2026	Our paper Free quantum computing was published in PNAS.
Dec 03, 2025	Member of the programme committee for QPL 2026 in Amsterdam.
Nov 10, 2025	Member of the programme committee for RC 2026 in Torino, and MFPS 2026 in Ljubljana.
Nov 06, 2025	Our paper Hadamard-Pi: Equational Quantum Programming was accepted for POPL 2026 in Rennes.
Jun 24, 2025	I received a Sapere Aude grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark to study quantum programming languages and their mathematics.

Selected Publications

PNAS

Free quantum computing

J. Carette, C. Heunen, R. Kaarsgaard, Neil J. Ross, and A. Sabry

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2026

Bib HTML PDF

@article{freeq,
  title = {Free quantum computing},
  author = {Carette, J. and Heunen, C. and Kaarsgaard, R. and Ross, Neil J. and Sabry, A.},
  journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America},
  volume = {123},
  number = {8},
  pages = {e2510881123},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1073/pnas.2510881123},
}

POPL

Hadamard-Pi: Equational Quantum Programming

W. Fang, C. Heunen, and R. Kaarsgaard

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, 2026

Bib PDF

@article{hadamardpi,
  author = {Fang, W. and Heunen, C. and Kaarsgaard, R.},
  title = {Hadamard-Pi: Equational Quantum Programming},
  journal = {Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages},
  volume = {10},
  number = {POPL},
  year = {2026},
}

POPL

With a Few Square Roots, Quantum Computing is as Easy as Pi

J. Carette, C. Heunen, R. Kaarsgaard, and A. Sabry

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, 2024

Bib PDF Code Slides

@article{sqrts,
  title = {With a Few Square Roots, Quantum Computing is as Easy as Pi},
  author = {Carette, J. and Heunen, C. and Kaarsgaard, R. and Sabry, A.},
  journal = {Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages},
  volume = {8},
  number = {POPL},
  pages = {546–574},
  year = {2024},
}

POPL

Quantum Information Effects

C. Heunen, and R. Kaarsgaard

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, 2022

Bib HTML PDF Video Code Slides

@article{qinfeff,
  title = {Quantum Information Effects},
  author = {Heunen, C. and Kaarsgaard, R.},
  journal = {Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages},
  volume = {6},
  number = {POPL},
  pages = {1-27},
  year = {2022},
}