ABSTRACT
The phase space representation is used in the classical mechanics of particles but is not appropriate for describing interference phenomena that occur in classical field theory such as classical optics. The methods of classical optics and quantum mechanics are amazingly similar. That is principally because both use Hilbert spaces to represent states. The only difference is in the use of non-commuting operators to represent observables in quantum mechanics. The quantum theory of light predicts perfect anti-coincidence for single detections on the two sides of a beam splitter, whereas classical light, however weak, would be divided on a beam splitter and produce a minimum degree of correlated or coincidence counts. In mathematics the Hermite polynomials are classical orthogonal polynomial sequences that arise in probability and numerical analysis as Gaussian quadrature. They are also used in systems theory in connection with non-linear operations on Gaussian noise and other sciences.
