Coherent states in a finite-dimensional basis: Their phase properties and relationship to coherent states of light

The Pegg-Barnett phase-operator formalism utilizes a finite basis set to represent operators of the harmonic oscillator; this enables the phase to be represented by a Hermitian operator, but rests on taking the dimensionality of the basis set to infinity for observable quantities. Simultaneously, in their approach Pegg and Barnett consider quantum states of a harmonic oscillator which are normalized in the Fock space, i.e., the dimensionality of the basis set in which the states of the harmonic oscillator are defined is supposed to be infinite, while the phase operator is defined in the finite-dimensional basis set. In this paper we address the problem of a consistent definition of a coherent state within a finite state basis. We employ displacement operators to define such coherent states and numerically evaluate observables as a function of the size of the basis set. We investigate phase properties of these coherent states. We find that if the dimensionality of the state space is much larger than the mean occupation number of the coherent states, then the results obtained in the finite-dimensional basis are applicable in the case of a ordinary quantum-mechanical harmonic oscillator. These coherent states are minimum uncertainty states with respect to quadrature operators (i.e., the position and momentum operators) and do not exhibit quadrature squeezing. A weakly excited (compared with the dimensionality of the state space) coherent state in finite-dimensional basis is not strictly speaking a minimum uncertainty state with respect to the number and phase operators. We give definitions of amplitude and phase squeezing and show that weakly excited coherent states can be amplitude squeezed. In the high-intensity limit (again compared with the dimensionality of the state space) these states exhibit phase squeezing.