Homodyne nonclassical area as a nonclassicality indicator

Abstract We propose a legitimate and easily computable nonclassicality indicator for the states of the electromagnetic field based on the standard deviation in the measurement of the homodyne rotated quadrature operator. The proposed nonclassicality indicator is the nonclassical area projected by the optical tomogram of the quantum state of light on the optical tomographic plane. If the nonclassical area projected by the optical tomogram of a quantum state is greater than zero, the state is nonclassical, and the area is zero for the pure classical state. It is also noted that the nonclassical area of a quantum state increases with an increase in the strength of nonclassicality-inducing operations on the state, such as squeezing, photon addition, etc. We have tested the validity of the nonclassical area measure by calculating the same for certain well-known nonclassical states, and found that essential features of the nonclassicality shown by the states are captured in the nonclassical area. We also show that the nonclassical area is robust against environment-induced decoherence of the states. The nonclassical area projected by the optical tomogram of a quantum state of light is experimentally tractable using the balanced homodyne detection of the quadrature operator of the field, avoiding the reconstruction of the density matrix or the quasiprobability distribution of the state.