Past exam of the laser science and quantum information processing course of the University of Oxford / 2015 / 2 / b / Solution

Orthogonality of the number states makes the coherent state norm an exponential series:Using $\hat{a}|n⟩=\sqrt{n}|n-1⟩$ and reindexing $m=n-1$,It is not an eigenstate of the creation operator. Indeed its supposed eigenvalue would have to be ${\alpha }^{\ast }$, from its expectation, whereasThis nonzero residual holds even at $\alpha =0$.