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Physical Review A

Phase distribution of a quantum state without using phase states

W. Vogel, Wolfgang P. Schleich

Published Dec 1, 1991• 79 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We use the field-strength eigenstates, that is, the quadrature eigenstates rotated by an angle ccphi, to define a phase distribution of a single mode of the radiation field. A measurement procedure lies at the heart of this operational phase distribution: A balanced homodyne-detection scheme measures, in principle, the field-strength probability curve in its dependence on ccphi. The probability of finding a zero electric field plotted versus ccphi constitutes the proposed distribution. For a wide class of quantum states, this curve is in good agreement with the abstract phase probability curve obtained from phase states, but it is free of the familiar problems accompanying the notion of a Hermitian phase operator. The phase distribution of a quantum state has been achieved without using phase states; this can be summarized as ``phase without phase.''

DOI
10.1103/physreva.44.7642

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We use the field-strength eigenstates, that is, the quadrature eigenstates rotated by an angle ccphi, to define a phase distribution of a single mode of the radiation field. A measurement procedure lies at the heart of this operational phase distribution: A balanced homodyne-detection scheme measures, in principle, the field-strength probability curve in its dependence on ccphi. The probability of finding a zero electric field plotted versus ccphi constitutes the proposed distribution. For a wide class of quantum states, this curve is in good agreement with the abstract phase probability curve obtained from phase states, but it is free of the familiar problems accompanying the notion of a Hermitian phase operator. The phase distribution of a quantum state has been achieved without using phase states; this can be summarized as ``phase without phase.''
Using coherent phase states, parameterized phase state distributions for a single-mode radiation field are introduced and their integral relation to the phase-parameterized field-strength distributions is studied. The integral kernel is evaluated and the problem of direct sampling of the coherent phase state distributions using balanced homodyne detection is considered. Numerical simulations show that when the value of the smoothing parameter is not too small the coherent phase state distributions can be obtained with sufficiently well accuracy. With decreasing value of the smoothing parameter the determination of the coherent phase state distributions may be an effort, because both the numerical calculation of the sampling function and the measurement of the field-strength distributions are required to be performed with drastically increasing accuracy.
Experiments have been performed to determine the Wigner distribution and the density matrix (and for pure states the wave function) of a light mode, by using tomographic inversion of a set of measured probability distributions for quadrature amplitudes.From these measurements the quantum distributions of optical phase and photon number have been obtained.The measurements of quadrature-amplitude distributions for a temporal mode of the electromagnetic field are carried out using balanced homodyne detection.We refer to this new method as optical homodyne tomography.Given the measured density matrix, one can experimentally infer any of the various quantum distributions of optical phase, in particular the Pegg-Barnett (or, equivalently, Shapiro-Shepard) phase distribution, the marginal Wigner distribution, and the Vogel-Schleich operational phase distribntion.We have used this approach to make measurements of the number-plase uncertainty relation for coherent-state fields.The coherent states do not attain the minimum value for the number-phase uncertainty product, as set by the expectation value of the commutator of the number and phase operators; this is true theoretically and experimentally.
A legitimate and easily computable measure of nonclassicality for the pure state of the single-mode electromagnetic field based on the standard deviation in the measurement of the homodyne rotated quadrature operator is proposed. The proposed quantity is an effective nonclassical area projected by the optical tomogram of the quantum state of light on to the optical tomographic plane. It is found that if the nonclassical area projected by the optical tomogram of a pure single-mode quantum state is greater than zero the state is strictly a nonclassical state and it is zero for the classical state. Nonclassical area spanned by the optical tomogram of nonclassical states of light such as Fock states, squeezed states, photon-added coherent states, and even and odd coherent states, have been evaluated theoretically. Nonclassical area projected by the optical tomogram of a quantum state of light may be experimentally tractable using the balanced homodyne detection of the quadrature operator of the field avoiding the reconstruction of density matrix or the quasiprobability distribution of the state.
Various quasiprobability distributions have been developed in the past using the Hilbert space of the single-mode light field. The development of a quasiprobability distribution associated with a phase operator has previously been impossible because of the absence of a unique Hermitian phase operator defined on the Hilbert space. Recently, however, Pegg and Barnett [Europhys. Lett. 6, 483 (1988); Phys. Rev. A 39, 1665 (1989)] and Barnett and Pegg [J. Mod. Optics 36, 7 (1989)] introduced a new formalism that does allow the construction of a Hermitian phase operator and associated phase eigenstates. In this paper we develop a quasiprobability distribution associated with the number and phase operators of the single-mode light field in the new formalism. The new distribution, which we call the number-phase Wigner function, has properties analogous to the Wigner function. We also derive the number-phase Wigner representation of number states, phase states, general physical states, coherent states, and the squeezed vacuum. We find this new representation has features that are related to the number and phase properties of states. For example, the number-phase Wigner representation of a number state is nonzero only on a circle, while the representation of a phase state is only nonzero along a radial line.
Optical homodyne detection is examined in view of the joint probability distribution. The usual view is that the relative phase between independent laser fields is localized by photon-number measurements in interference experiments such as homodyne detection. This is why operationally coherent states for laser fields are used in the description of homodyne detection and optical quantum-state tomography. Here, we elucidate these situations by considering the joint probability distribution and the invariance of homodyne detection under the phase transformation of optical fields.