UC Berkeley

Noncommuting observables cannot be simultaneously measured; however, under local hidden variable models, they must simultaneously hold premeasurement values, implying the existence of a joint probability distribution. We study the joint distributions of noncommuting observables on qubits, with possible criteria of positivity and the Fréchet bounds limiting the joint probabilities, concluding that the latter may be negative. We use symmetrization, justified heuristically and then more carefully via the Moyal characteristic function, to find the quantum operator corresponding to the product of noncommuting observables. This is then used to construct Quasi-Bell inequalities, Bell inequalities containing products of noncommuting observables, on two qubits. These inequalities place limits on the local hidden variable models that define joint probabilities for noncommuting observables. We find that the Quasi-Bell inequalities have a quantum to classical violation as high as 3/2 on two qubit, higher than conventional Bell inequalities. The result demonstrates the theoretical importance of noncommutativity in the nonlocality of quantum mechanics and provides an insightful generalization of Bell inequalities.