Abstract

Simple homodyne detection with a coherent local oscillator can be described as continuous measurement of a “discrete” quadrature. It is well known that the simple homodyne detection with a strong local oscillator can be treated as continuous measurement of a continuous quadrature. We concentrate on the situation where the measured quantum harmonic oscillator, for example, a simple cavity mode decays into the detector. The measured quadrature operators are defined in terms of the degrees of freedom of the detector. A view of damped harmonic oscillator is based on such degrees of freedom of a reservoir. The same is outlined for homodyne detection of the complex amplitude.

© 2001 EPS