Homodyne measurement of exponential phase moments for quantum-phase reconstruction

Abstract

We directly sample the exponential moments of the canonical phase for various quantum states from the homodyne output. The method enables us to study the phase properties experimentally, without making the detour via reconstructing the density matrix or the Wigner function and calculating the phase statistics from them. In particular, combing the measurement with a measurement of the photon-number variance, we verify fundamental number-phase uncertainty.

1 Table and 4 Postscript figures, using Latex