INTRINSIC PHASE OPERATOR OF THE NOH-FOUGERES-MANDEL EXPERIMENTS

We find the intrinsic Hermitian phase operator associated with the Noh -Fougeres-Mandel apparatus. This is achieved by first identifying the corresponding phasor basis. Previous, alternative approaches are shown to be equivalent. Quantum analogs of trigonometric functions are disc ussed with the aid of their Glauber and Wigner representations.