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arXiv:2306.11519 · Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

Symmetries and Wigner representations of operational theories

Ties-A. Ohst, Martin Plávala

Published Sep 30, 2024• 1 citation
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Abstract

Abstract We develop the theory of Wigner representations for general probabilistic theories (GPTs), a large class of operational theories that include both classical and quantum theory. The Wigner representations that we introduce are a natural way to describe the theory in terms of some fixed observables; these observables are often picked to be position and momentum or spin observables. This allows us to introduce symmetries which transform the outcomes of the observables used to construct the Wigner representation; we obtain several results for when these symmetries are well defined or when they uniquely specify the Wigner representation.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8121/ad8198

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Abstract We develop the theory of Wigner representations for general probabilistic theories (GPTs), a large class of operational theories that include both classical and quantum theory. The Wigner representations that we introduce are a natural way to describe the theory in terms of some fixed observables; these observables are often picked to be position and momentum or spin observables. This allows us to introduce symmetries which transform the outcomes of the observables used to construct the Wigner representation; we obtain several results for when these symmetries are well defined or when they uniquely specify the Wigner representation.
We show how to construct general probabilistic theories that contain an energy observable dependent on position and momentum. The construction is in accordance with classical and quantum theory and allows for physical predictions, such as the probability distribution for position, momentum, and energy. We demonstrate the construction by formulating a toy model for the harmonic oscillator that is neither classical nor quantum. The model features a discrete energy spectrum, a ground state with sharp position and momentum, an eigenstate with a nonpositive Wigner function as well as a state that has tunneling properties. The toy model demonstrates that operational theories can be a viable alternative approach for formulating physical theories.
We study a generalization of the Wigner function to arbitrary tuples of hermitian operators. We show that for any collection of hermitian operators A1...An , and any quantum state there is a unique joint distribution on R^n, with the property that the marginals of all linear combinations of the operators coincide with their quantum counterpart. In other words, we consider the inverse Radon transform of the exact quantum probability distributions of all linear combinations. We call it the Wigner distribution, because for position and momentum this property defines the standard Wigner function. We discuss the application to finite dimensional systems, establish many basic properties and illustrate these by examples. The properties include the support, the location of singularities, positivity, the behavior under symmetry groups, and informational completeness.
We study a generalization of the Wigner function to arbitrary tuples of Hermitian operators. We show that for any collection of Hermitian operators A1, …, An and any quantum state, there is a unique joint distribution on Rn with the property that the marginals of all linear combinations of the Ak coincide with their quantum counterparts. In other words, we consider the inverse Radon transform of the exact quantum probability distributions of all linear combinations. We call it the Wigner distribution because for position and momentum, this property defines the standard Wigner function. We discuss the application to finite dimensional systems, establish many basic properties, and illustrate these by examples. The properties include the support, the location of singularities, positivity, the behavior under symmetry groups, and informational completeness.
We show that for any collection of hermitian operators A1...An , and any quantum state there is a unique joint distribution on R^n, with the property that the marginals of all linear combinations of the operators coincide with their quantum counterpart. We call it the Wigner distribution, because for position and momentum this property defines the standard Wigner function. In this note we discuss the application to finite dimensional systems, establish many basic properties and illustrate these by examples. The properties include the support, the location of singularities, positivity, the behaviour under symmetry groups, and informational completeness.