Negative probabilities, Fine's theorem, and linear positivity

Many situations in quantum theory and other areas of physics lead to quasiprobabilities which seem to be physically useful but can be negative. The interpretation of such objects is not at all clear. In this paper, we show that quasiprobabilities naturally fall into two qualitatively different types, according to whether their non-negative marginals can or cannot be matched to a non-negative probability. The former type of quasiprobabilities, which we call viable, are qualitatively similar to true probabilities, but the latter type, which we call nonviable, may not have a sensible interpretation. Determining the existence of a probability matching given marginals is a nontrivial question in general. In simple examples, Fine's theorem indicates that inequalities of the Bell and Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) types provide criteria for its existence, and these examples are considered in detail. Our results have consequences for the linear positivity condition of Goldstein and Page in the context of the histories approach to quantum theory. Although it is a very weak condition for the assignment of probabilities, it fails in some important cases where our results indicate that probabilities clearly exist. We speculate that our method, of matching probabilities to a given set of marginals, provides a general method of assigning probabilities to histories and we show that it passes the Diósi test for the statistical independence of subsystems.

Figure 1

The bold line shows the probability $q(++++)$ (which is scaled by a factor of 4 for clarity) and the dashed line shows CHSH the inequality Eq. (5.9). There are clear regions around $\theta =\pi /2$ and $\theta =3\pi /2$ where the CHSH inequalities are satisfied but the quasiprobability is negative.