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arXiv:atom-ph/9603003 · Physical Review Letters

Direct Probing of Quantum Phase Space by Photon Counting

Konrad Banaszek, K. Wódkiewicz

Published Jun 3, 1996• 340 citations
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Abstract

We propose a very simple experimental setup to measure, via photon counting, the overlap of the Wigner functions characterizing two single mode light beams. We show that this scheme can be applied to determine directly the phase space quasiprobability distribution of the single mode field and in a certain limit the Wigner function can be measured without use of tomographic reconstruction algorithms. The deleterious effects of nonunit photodetector efficiency are analyzed.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.76.4344

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