Quantum theory of field-quadrature measurements

Abstract

The quantum effects on a cavity mode of the electromagnetic field caused by measuring one of its quadrature components is analyzed. We consider three measurement schemes: an intracavity quantum-nondemolition coupling to another mode, simple homodyne detection, and balanced homodyne detection. It is shown that, for suitable initial conditions, the first scheme has an effect which approaches that of a projective collapse of the state vector for long measurement times. However, the two homodyne schemes (which are shown to be equivalent for large local-oscillator amplitudes) do not approximate a projective measurement in any limit. In particular, it is shown that homodyne measurement cannot produce a squeezed state from a classical initial state. All three schemes are analyzed in terms of ``quantum trajectories'' which link measurement theory with stochastic quantum-jump processes.