Experimental quantification of non-Gaussianity of phase-randomized coherent states

TL;DR

This paper experimentally investigates the non-Gaussian features of phase-randomized coherent states by reconstructing their Wigner functions and comparing two measures of non-Gaussianity, providing insights into their consistency and applicability.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive experimental approach to quantify non-Gaussianity in phase-randomized coherent states using two measures and analyzes their relative effectiveness.

Findings

Demonstrates consistency between different non-Gaussianity measures.

Shows monotonicity of measures for phase-randomized coherent states.

Provides criteria to select suitable non-Gaussianity measures for practical applications.

Abstract

We present the experimental investigation of the non-Gaussian nature of some mixtures of Fock states by reconstructing their Wigner function and exploiting two recently introduced measures of non-Gaussianity. In particular, we demonstrate the consistency between the different approaches and the monotonicity of the two measures for states belonging to the class of phase randomized coherent states. Moreover, we prove that the exact behavior of one measure with respect to the other depends on the states under investigation and devise possible criteria to discriminate which measure is more useful for the characterization of the states in realistic applications.