Configuration-Space Photon Number Operators in Quantum Optics
- 29 April 1966
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review B
- Vol. 144 (4), 1071-1077
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrev.144.1071
Abstract
Some properties of the operator representing the number of photons localized in a finite volume at time are investigated. To some extent these properties reflect the well-known difficulty of localizing photons in space-time. However, it is shown that, when the linear dimensions of are large compared with the wave-length of any occupied mode of the field, the operator acquires some simple properties. The commutator of and the detection operator is expressible in an interesting form. The commutator and relations derived from it become particularly simple for certain space-time regions which we label conjoint and disjoint. An orthogonal set of eigenstates of is found, together with the corresponding eigenvalues, and it is shown that an arbitrary state is expressible in terms of these eigenstates. Some -order correlations of the operators are evaluated, and the results are used to calculate the probability distribution of eigenvalues of for an arbitrary state of the field.
Keywords
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