Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-laser-science-and-quantum-information-processing-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2022/3/b/solution

Set and . Their commutator is
It commutes with both operators, so the stated Baker--Campbell--Hausdorff formula terminates:
In particular . Expanding the remaining exponential and using gives the number state expansion
The orthonormality of the number states gives
This is a Poisson distribution with parameter . Its probabilities sum to . The phase of affects the coherent state's relative probability amplitudes but not its photon number probabilities. At the distribution is concentrated at .

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