English

Grand Unification of All Discrete Wigner Functions on $d \times d$ Phase Space

Quantum Physics 2025-11-26 v4

Abstract

Wigner functions help visualise quantum states and dynamics while supporting quantitative analysis in quantum information. In the discrete setting, many inequivalent constructions coexist for each Hilbert-space dimension. This fragmentation obscures which features are fundamental and which are artefacts of representation. We introduce a stencil-based framework that exhausts all possible d×dd\times d discrete Wigner functions for a single dd-dimensional quantum system (including a novel one for even dd), subsuming known forms. We also give explicit invertible linear maps between definitions within the same dd, enabling direct comparison of operational properties and exposing representation dependence.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2503.09353,
  title  = {Grand Unification of All Discrete Wigner Functions on $d \times d$ Phase Space},
  author = {Lucky K. Antonopoulos and Dominic G. Lewis and Jack Davis and Nicholas Funai and Nicolas C. Menicucci},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.09353},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

(v4) 8 Pages, 2 figures. Minor edits. Version published in PRA. (V3) 8 Pages, 2 figures. Rewritten for clarity, with the addition of new results. (v2) 8 pages, 2 figures. Theorem 5 clarified. Added a reference. Fixed typos. (v1) 8 pages, 2 figures