Homodyne tomography provides a way for measuring generic field-operators. Here we analyze the determination of the most relevant quantities: intensity, field, amplitude and phase. We show that tomographic measurements are affected by additional noise in comparison with the direct detection of each observable by itself. The case of of coherent states has been analyzed in details and earlier estimations of tomographic precision are critically discussed.
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/9704034,
title = {Added noise in homodyne measurement of field-observables},
author = {Giacomo M. D'Ariano and Matteo G. A. Paris},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/9704034},
year = {2009}
}