Quasi-probability Distribution
A quasiprobability distribution is a mathematical object similar to a probability distribution but relaxing some of the axioms of probability theory. Although quasiprobabilities share many of the same general features of ordinary probabilities such as the ability to take expectation values with respect to the weights of the distribution, they all violate the third probability axiom because regions integrated under them do not represent probabilities of mutually exclusive states. To compensate, some quasiprobability distributions also counterintuitively have regions of negative probability density, contradicting the first axiom. Quasiprobability distributions arise naturally in the study of quantum mechanics when treated in the phase space formulation, commonly used in quantum optics, time-frequency analysis, and elsewhere.
Read more about Quasi-probability Distribution: Introduction, Characteristic Functions, Time Evolution and Operator Correspondences
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“There is the illusion of time, which is very deep; who has disposed of it? Mor come to the conviction that what seems the succession of thought is only the distribution of wholes into causal series.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)