Sufficient conditions, lower bounds and trade-off relations for quantumness in Kirkwood-Dirac quasiprobability

TL;DR

This paper investigates the quantumness in Kirkwood-Dirac quasiprobability, establishing conditions for nonclassical values, introducing measures of quantumness, and deriving trade-off relations akin to uncertainty principles.

Contribution

It provides the first sufficient conditions for nonclassical KD quasiprobability values and introduces quantumness measures with associated bounds and trade-off relations.

Findings

Derived lower bounds for quantumness measures.

Established trade-off relations similar to uncertainty principles.

Discussed measurement methods and operational interpretations.

Abstract

Kirkwood-Dirac (KD) quasiprobability is a quantum analog of classical phase space probability. It offers an informationally complete representation of quantum state wherein the quantumness associated with quantum noncommutativity manifests in its nonclassical values, i.e., the nonreal and/or negative values of the real part. This naturally raises a question: how does such form of quantumness comply with the uncertainty principle which also arise from quantum noncommutativity? Here, first, we obtain sufficient conditions for the KD quasiprobability defined relative to a pair of PVM (projection-valued measure) bases to have nonclassical values. Using these nonclassical values, we then introduce two quantities which capture the amount of KD quantumness in a quantum state relative to a single PVM basis. They are defined respectively as the nonreality, and the classicality which captures both the nonreality and negativity, of the associated KD quasiprobability over the PVM basis of interest, and another PVM basis, and maximized over all possible choices of the latter. We obtain their lower bounds, and derive trade-off relations respectively reminiscent of the Robertson and Robertson-Schr\"odinger uncertainty relations but with lower bounds maximized over the convex sets of Hermitian operators whose complete sets of eigenprojectors are given by the PVM bases. We discuss their measurement using weak value measurement and classical optimization, and suggest information theoretical and operational interpretations in terms of optimal estimation of the PVM basis and state disturbance.