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Coherent states

The definition of coherent states in the Fock basis. These states are eigenstates of the annihilation operator and can be expanded in the number basis as:

\[\begin{equation} \begin{aligned} \lvert \alpha \rangle & =e^{-\frac{|\alpha|²}{2}}\sum_{n=0}^\infty\dfrac{\alpha^n}{\sqrt{n!}}\lvert n \rangle\\ \langle \alpha \rvert & =e^{-\frac{|\alpha|²}{2}}\sum_{m=0}^\infty\dfrac{(\alpha^*)^m}{\sqrt{m!}}\langle m \rvert \end{aligned} \end{equation}\]

Taking the outer product of the coherent state with itself gives the corresponding density operator:

\[\begin{equation} \label{formula:coherent_state matrix} \lvert \alpha \rangle\langle \alpha \rvert=e^{-|\alpha|²}\sum_{n,m=0}^\infty\dfrac{\alpha^n(\alpha^*)^m}{\sqrt{n!m!}}\lvert n \rangle \langle m \rvert \end{equation}\]

Now, both sides of \(\eqref{formula:coherent_state matrix}\) are integrated over the phase space with the measure \(d^2\alpha/\pi\). This is to show that coherent states form an overcomplete basis that resolves the identity.

Integrating both sides of \(\eqref{formula:coherent_state matrix}\) with \(d^2\alpha/\pi\) gives:

\[\begin{equation} \label{formula:coherent_state matrix_integral} \int \dfrac{d^2\alpha}{\pi}\lvert \alpha \rangle\langle \alpha \rvert=\sum_{n,m=0}^\infty\dfrac{\lvert n \rangle \langle m \rvert}{\sqrt{n!m!}}\int\dfrac{d^2\alpha}{\pi}e^{-|\alpha|^2}\alpha^n(\alpha^*)^m \end{equation}\]

Thus, the problem reduces to evaluating the phase-space integral appearing on the right-hand side.

To evaluate this integral, a switch to polar coordinates in the complex plane is done:

\[\begin{equation} \begin{aligned} \alpha &=re^{i\phi},\\ d^2\alpha &=rdrd\phi, \end{aligned} \end{equation}\]

This transformation separates the integral into radial and angular parts. Substituting into \(\eqref{formula:coherent_state matrix_integral}\), results in:

\[\begin{equation} \label{formula:coherent_state_integral} \begin{aligned} &\int \dfrac{d^2\alpha}{\pi}e^{-|\alpha^2|}\alpha^n(\alpha^*)\\ &=\int\dfrac{rdrd\phi}{\pi}e^{-r^2}\left(re^{i\phi}\right)^n\left(re^{-i\phi}\right)^m\\ &=\int_{0}^{\infty}\dfrac{r^{n+m+1}e^{-r^2}}{\pi}dr\int_{0}^{2\pi}e^{i(n-m)\phi}d\phi \end{aligned} \end{equation}\]

The angular integral enforces orthogonality between different number states:

\[\begin{equation} \begin{aligned} \int_{0}^{2\pi}e^{i(n-m)\phi}d\phi= \begin{cases} 2\pi, & n = m, \\ 0, & n\neq m, \end{cases} \end{aligned} \end{equation}\]

This shows that only the diagonal terms with \(n=m\) contribute to the integral. Therefore, equation \(\eqref{formula:coherent_state_integral}\) simplifies to

\[\begin{equation} 2\pi\int_{0}^{\infty}\dfrac{r^{2n+1}e^{-r^2}}{\pi}dr\ \end{equation}\]

for \(n=m\).

To evaluate the remaining radial integral, the substitution following substitution is done:

\[\begin{equation} \begin{aligned} u&=r^2,\\ du&=2rdr. \end{aligned} \end{equation}\]

As a result the integral transforms into a standard Gamma-function:

\[\begin{equation} 2\int_{0}^{\infty}r^{n2n+1}e^{-r^2}dr=\int_{0}^{\infty}u^ne^{-u}du=\Gamma(n+1)=n! \end{equation}\]

Using this result, \(\eqref{formula:coherent_state_integral}\) evaluates to

\[\begin{equation} \int \dfrac{d^2\alpha}{\pi}e^{-|\alpha^2|}\alpha^n(\alpha^*)=n!. \end{equation}\]

Finally, substituting this back into \(\eqref{formula:coherent_state matrix_integral}\), the following identity can be obtained:

\[\begin{equation} \label{eq:coherent_identity} \int \dfrac{d^2\alpha}{\pi}\lvert \alpha \rangle \langle \alpha \rvert=\sum_{n=0}^\infty \lvert n \rangle \langle n \rvert=\mathbb{1} \end{equation}\]

This shows that coherent states resolve the identity operator, demonstrating that they form an overcomplete basis in Hilbert space.