Abstract

The new Hermitian phase formalism of Pegg and Barnett allows us to study a number of phase characteristics of the optical fields that were unaccessible before, such as the expectation values and variances of the Hermitian phase operators, the phase distribution functions, and the correlations between the phases of different modes. We have systematically studied the phase properties of fields generated in a number of nonlinear optical processes including the anharmonic oscillator model, the elliptically polarized light propagating in a nonlinear Kerr medium, the two-mode squeezed vacuum states, the second harmonic generation, the parametric down-conversion with quantum pump, the Jaynes-Cummings model, the fractional coherent states, and the displaced number states.

© 1992 IQEC