Grand unification of all discrete Wigner functions on <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>d</mml:mi> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> <mml:mi>d</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> phase space
Wigner functions help visualize 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 artifacts of representation. We introduce a stencil-based framework that exhausts all possible $d\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}d$ discrete Wigner functions for a single $d$-dimensional quantum system (including a novel one for even $d$), subsuming known forms. We also give explicit invertible linear maps between definitions within the same $d$, enabling direct comparison of operational properties and exposing representation dependence.
Authors
- J. Davis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1705-1798)
- Nicholas Funai (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1100-0431)
- Dominic G. Lewis
- Nicolas C. Menicucci (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3964-233X)
- Lucky K. Antonopoulos
Institutions
- Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (FR)
- MIT University (MK)
- École Normale Supérieure (BI)
- RMIT University (AU)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical review. A/Physical review, A
- Published
- 2025-09-24
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/s5wn-mysr
- Primary Topic
- Quantum Information and Cryptography
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00