Husimi's wave functions and quantum interference in phase space

A new approach for studying a phase space description of the photon number distribution of nonclassical states, which is based on wavefunctions defined in the coherent-state quantum phase space representation, is presented. We found that our wavefunctions are similar to Husimi's function amplitude. We illustrate this approach using the examples of squeezed states and displaced number states, and show that it provides an efficient method for computing the photon number distribution directly in phase space without using the WKB approximation.