Optical tomography of Fock state superpositions

TL;DR

This paper discusses how to represent and verify optical tomograms of photon Fock state superpositions, providing explicit formulas and methods to assess experimental data accuracy, considering effects like thermal noise.

Contribution

It introduces a method to represent measured optical tomograms directly and provides explicit formulas for Fock state superpositions, including noise effects.

Findings

Explicit expressions for optical tomograms using Hermite polynomials.

A test for verifying experimental data accuracy.

Analysis of thermal noise impact on state purity.

Abstract

We consider optical tomography of photon Fock state superpositions in connection with recent experimental achievements. The emphasis is put on the fact that it suffices to represent the measured tomogram as a main result of the experiment. We suggest a test for checking the correctness of experimental data. Explicit expressions for optical tomograms of Fock state superpositions are given in terms of Hermite polynomials. Particular cases of vacuum and low photon-number state superposition are considered as well as influence of thermal noise on state purity is studied.