Classicality in discrete Wigner functions

Cecilia Cormick, Ernesto F. Galvão, Daniel Gottesman, Juan Pablo Paz, Arthur O. Pittenger
2006 Physical Review A. Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics  
Gibbons et al. [Phys. Rev. A 70, 062101(2004)] have recently defined a class of discrete Wigner functions W to represent quantum states in a Hilbert space with finite dimension. We show that the only pure states having non-negative W for all such functions are stabilizer states, as conjectured by one of us [Phys. Rev. A 71, 042302 (2005)]. We also show that the unitaries preserving non-negativity of W for all definitions of W form a subgroup of the Clifford group. This means pure states with
more » ... -negative W and their associated unitary dynamics are classical in the sense of admitting an efficient classical simulation scheme using the stabilizer formalism.
doi:10.1103/physreva.73.012301 fatcat:cqe23g4v6vasvc3psuz7ylpsj4