Quasiprobabilities Shed Light on Quantum Advantage

Nicole Yunger Halpern (IPST/ Harvard University) was quoted in Physics World, “Quasiprobabilities shed light on quantum advantage” June 14. “…our research shows that nonclassical Kirkwood-Dirac quasiprobabilities are more outlandish than quantum uncertainty.”

The article referred to a recently published paper in the Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, June 11.  Yunger Halpern, et al., prove sufficient conditions for the KD distribution to be nonclassical (equivalently, necessary conditions for it to be classical). They also quantify the KD nonclassicality achievable under various conditions. Their work resolves long-standing questions about nonclassicality and may be used to engineer quantum advantages.

Yunger Halpern was recently named the Institute of Physics’ International Quantum Technology Emerging Researcher at the Quantum 2020 conference held in October 2020 for “far-reaching theoretical contributions spanning quantum thermodynamics, quantum information scrambling, quantum metrology, and the foundations of quantum theory.”