STATISTICAL DESCRIPTIONS OF FREE BOSON FIELDS,
Abstract
Two new methods of describing statistical light beams have recently been published. Glauber has introduced the Prepresentation of boson field density matrices, and Sudarshan has developed a probability functional approach which is claimed to imply an equivalence between the classical and quantum mechanical descriptions of statistical light beams. This note demonstrates that using conventional stochastic process methods in the Heisenberg picture to describe a light beam produced by a statistical ensemble of classical (c-number) sources is equivalent to representing the statistical state of the light beam by a density matrix having a P-representation. The relation between the classical and quantum statistical descriptions implied by Sudarshan's probability functional approach is shown to be purely formal and without physical meaning. Sudarshan's statement that the probability functional method can be used to prove that all the correlation functions of the beam determine its density matrix is demonstrated to be incorrect. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 1964
- Accession Number
- AD0603619
Entities
People
- Dennis Holliday
Organizations
- RAND Corporation