Talk:Optical phase space

Choice of Units
This article could be improved with the use of standard units (ħ != 1). In many cases this may seem like a step backwards - but let me explain.

The choice of unit system should be up to the reader; In many cases natural units are a great tool, but they should be used with caution. Converting from standard units to natural units is trivial - but it takes a trained eye to do the reverse.


 * For those who know the subject quite well: h-bar is implicit and can read such an article choosing to set it to 1. That is a "loss of information" (to the untrained eye) which they themselves are able to recover with logic and experience.


 * For those who don't: That loss of information isn't recoverable without a bit more effort. This set of people includes many Undergraduate physics students, who are generally taught in standard units.

I'd guess that the latter group are the more common readers of this article.

JakeArkinstall (talk) 10:11, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I'll review, but having hbar everywhere tends to clutter up all the formulas, making them more complicated, and harder to understand, harder to get to the bottom of what is being said. Its kind-of-like inserting the words "inches per gallon" into every formula, it creates a confusing, archaic clutter. h is just a unit!  Measure everything in electron-volts, remember the size of Avogadros number if you need to convert to kilograms. Indeed, I think that undergrads would e better served with the hbar=1 convention. User:Linas (talk) 01:00, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Upon review, it looks like its simply not needed in almost all the equations. I added it in the one place where it was obviusly mising. User:Linas (talk) 02:25, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Use of hats on operators
Can we get reconsider the use of hats that are spewn all over this article? I think the reader is supposed to infer that a hat means its an operator, and no hat means its not, but we never come out and say that ... I find the hats annoying, distracting and ugly ... User:Linas (talk) 02:25, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I added a paragraph explaining the notation. Seems fitting for the level at whcih this article is written. So the above suggestion is withdrawn. User:Linas (talk) 02:40, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Watch out: Normalization convention of the quadratures is inconsistent
For the quadratures, different conventions of normalization and units are possible. We should however watch out not to mix them up. For example, the formulas
 * $$ \widehat q = \tfrac 1 { 2}(\widehat a^\dagger + \widehat a)$$

and
 * $$ \langle\alpha|\widehat{q}|\alpha\rangle = 2^{-1/2}(\langle\alpha|\widehat{a}^{\dagger}|\alpha\rangle + \langle\alpha|\widehat{a}|\alpha\rangle) $$

are mutually inconsistent, the quadratures are rescaled by a factor $$\sqrt{2}$$. We should stick to a single convention.--Wouterretuow (talk) 15:14, 29 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Changed it to be constant $$\sqrt{2}$$, which is a more common definition. --Shohamjac (talk) 18:24, 22 June 2019 (UTC)