Abstract

The assignment of a natural number to the information content of a quantum mechanical state has always appeared very useful; the Heisenberg uncertainty and the von Neumann entropy are probably the best known representatives of such a function. It seems, however, often appropriate to have a measure of information that takes into account the measuring apparatus, which serves to obtain this information. For this purpose the Shannon entropy has been developed.^1,2 For a measuring apparatus that basically counts photons, the corresponding Shannon entropy has been investigated for the most important states in quantum optics.³

© 1994 IEEE