English

Wigner functional theory for quantum optics

Quantum Physics 2020-06-19 v5 Optics

Abstract

Using the quadrature bases that incorporate the spatiotemporal degrees of freedom, we develop a Wigner functional theory for quantum optics, as an extension of the Moyal formalism. Since the spatiotemporal quadrature bases span the complete Hilbert space of all quantum optical states, it does not require factorization as a tensor product of discrete Hilbert spaces. The Wigner functions associated with such a space become functionals and operations are expressed by functional integrals -- the functional version of the star product. The resulting formalism enables tractable calculations for scenarios where both spatiotemporal degrees of freedom and particle-number degrees of freedom are relevant. To demonstrate the approach, we compute examples of Wigner functionals for a few well-known states and operators.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1901.07782,
  title  = {Wigner functional theory for quantum optics},
  author = {Filippus S. Roux and Nicolas Fabre},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.07782},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

19 pages, no figures, minor corrections

R2 v1 2026-06-23T07:19:30.739Z