A proposal for experimental detection of amplitude nth-power squeezing

Recently, in several theoretical investigations, amplitude nth-power squeezing has been studied with n = 2, 3, 4, 5. In the present paper, we give a proposal for experimental detection of amplitude nth-power squeezing using ordinary homodyning with coherent light for arbitrary power n and discuss in detail its theory. The proposed scheme requires only repeated measurements of the factorial moments of number of photons in the light obtained after homodyning, with various shifts of phase of coherent light, and involves no approximations, whatsoever. This has advantage over the method proposed by Shchukin and Vogel [Phys. Rev. A 72 (2005) 043808] in that our method requires only one beam splitter and only one photodetector, and also lesser number of repetitions of experiment with phase-shifted coherent light.