Measurement of the Wigner distribution and the density matrix of a light mode by using optical homodyne tomography: application to squeezed states and vacuum
D. T. Smithey, M. Beck, Adel Faridani +1 more
We report measurements of the Wigner distribution and the density matrix of an electromagnetic field mode, for both vacuum and quadrature-squeezed states. As proposed by Vogel and Risken,1 we obtained the Wigner distribution by tomographic inversion of a set of probability distributions of field-quadrature amplitudes measured by using balanced homodyne detection. A Fourier transform of the Wiener function yields the density matrix, which, according to the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, contains all knowable information about a given quantum system.
Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference•May 2, 1993•1 citation