Re: Looking for examples of Physically-Meaningful, Non-Gaussian Wavefunctions


I am looking, again, for wavefunctions that are physically meaningful,
which I suppose would mean that they are solutions to a field equation
or in some other way underlie observable physics.

Examples of wavefunctions which are non-gaussian and still have a
physical relevance abound in quantum optics. These states are
solutions of the quantised maxwell equations for the electromagnetic
field. But of course, these wavefunctions have no representation in
the position basis and are only meaningful in the number basis of the
field. States like the binomial state, negative binomial state,
squeezed state are examples of purely non-gaussian states. On the
other hand, there are states like the glauber-lachs state which is a
superposition of a thermal state over an underlying gaussian state
(physically realised as the addition of a few thermal photons into a
cavity filled with laser light).


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