Abstract

By making use of the diagonal coherent state representation of an optical field, together with the operator relations between dynamic variables at the input and output of a beam splitter, we have derived a general relation between density operators of input and output states. As an illustration of the general procedure we consider two orthogonally polarized photons at the beam splitter input and derive the output state. We show that in the special case in which the reflectivities and transmissivities of the beam splitter are equal, this state exhibits certain features of the well-known singlet state for orthogonally polarized photons.

© 1987 Optical Society of America