Synthesis and tomographic characterization of the displaced Fock state of light

Displaced Fock states of the electromagnetic field have been synthesized by overlapping the pulsed optical single-photon Fock state \1> with coherent states on a high-reflection beam splitter and completely characterized by means of quantum homodyne tomography. The reconstruction reveals nonclassical properties of displaced Fock states, such as negativity of the Wigner function and photon number oscillations. To our knowledge, this is the first time complete tomographic reconstruction has been performed on a highly nonclassical optical state.