Optics Letters
Two quantum-mechanical photocount formulas
Hong-Yi Fan, Liyun Hu
Abstract
We derive two quantum-mechanical photocount formulas when a light field's density operator rho is known; one involves rho's coherent state mean value and the other involves rho's Wigner function; when this information is known, then using these two formulas to calculate the photocount would be convenient. We employ the technique of integration within an antinormally ordered (or Weyl-ordered) product of operators in our derivation.