Distribution Functions in Physics: Fundamentals

Abstract

This is the first part of what will be a two-part review of distribution functions in physics. Here we deal with fundamentals and the second part will deal with applications. We discuss in detail the properties of the distribution function defined earlier by one of us (EPW) and we derive some new results. Next, we treat various other distribution functions. Among the latter we emphasize the so-called P distribution, as well as the generalized P distribution, because of their importance in quantum optics.KeywordsDistribution FunctionPhase SpaceDensity MatrixCoherent StateWigner FunctionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.