Optical heterodyne imaging and Wigner phase space distributions

Opt Lett. 1996 Sep 15;21(18):1427-9. doi: 10.1364/ol.21.001427.

Abstract

We demonstrate that optical heterodyne imaging directly measures smoothed Wigner phase space distributions. This method may be broadly applicable to fundamental studies of light propagation and tomographic imaging. Basic physical properties of Wigner distributions are illustrated by experimental measurements.