First appearance of quasiprobability negativity in quantum many-body dynamics

Quantum Physics arXiv:2601.00259 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 1 Jan 2026] Title:First appearance of quasiprobability negativity in quantum many-body dynamics Authors:Rohit Kumar Shukla, Amikam Levy View a PDF of the paper titled First appearance of quasiprobability negativity in quantum many-body dynamics, by Rohit Kumar Shukla and Amikam Levy View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Quasiprobability distributions capture aspects of quantum dynamics that have no classical counterpart, yet the dynamical emergence of their negativity in many-body systems remains largely unexplored. We introduce the \emph{first-time negativity} (FTN) of the Margenau-Hill quasiprobability as a dynamical indicator of when local measurement sequences in an interacting quantum system begin to exhibit genuinely nonclassical behavior. Using the Ising chain, we show that FTN discriminates clearly between interaction-dominated and field-dominated regimes, is systematically reshaped by temperature, and responds sensitively to the breaking of integrability. When measurements are performed on different sites, FTN reveals a characteristic spatio-temporal structure that reflects the finite-time spreading of operator incompatibility across the lattice. We further compare the numerical onset of negativity with a recently proposed quantum speed limit (QSL) for quasiprobabilities, which provides a geometric benchmark for the observed dynamics. Our results identify FTN as a practical and experimentally accessible probe of real-time quantum coherence and contextuality, directly suited to current platforms capable of sequential weak and strong measurements. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2601.00259 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2601.00259v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.00259 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Rohit Kumar Shukla [view email] [v1] Thu, 1 Jan 2026 08:25:27 UTC (492 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled First appearance of quasiprobability negativity in quantum many-body dynamics, by Rohit Kumar Shukla and Amikam LevyView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-01 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)