Negative Probability

The uncertainty principle asserts a limit to the precision with which position x and momentum p of a particle can be known simultaneously. You may know the probability distributions of x and p individually but the joint distribution makes no physical sense. Yet Wigner exhibited such a joint distribution f(x,p). There was, however, a little trouble with it: some of its values were negative. Nevertheless Wigner’s discovery attracted attention and found applications. There are other joint distribution, all with negative values, which produce the correct marginal distributions of x and p. But only Wigner’s distribution produces the correct marginal distributions for all linear combinations of position and momentum. We offer a simple proof of the uniqueness and discuss related issues.