Grand unification of all discrete Wigner functions on phase space
Phys. Rev. A 112, 052219 – Published 20 November, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/s5wn-mysr
Abstract
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 discrete Wigner functions for a single -dimensional quantum system (including a novel one for even ), subsuming known forms. We also give explicit invertible linear maps between definitions within the same , enabling direct comparison of operational properties and exposing representation dependence.