Bounding Kirkwood-Dirac negativity of Gaussian processes

Abstract

The Kirkwood-Dirac quasiprobability provides an operational representation of a quantum state, whose negativity serves as a measure of nonclassicality. Despite its fundamental importance, the extremal values of the Kirkwood-Dirac negativity are still unknown in the general case. We investigate the Kirkwood-Dirac quasiprobability of an arbitrary quantum state under Gaussian processes. In this setting, we derive an upper bound on the negativity for any number of modes and measurements. For a single mode and two measurements, we show that the eigenstates of the quadrature operators saturate this upper bound, while a nontrivial minimum is reached by pure Gaussian states. As a consequence, our results indicate that Gaussian states are sufficient to achieve extreme values of nonclassicality.