Local sampling of phase-space distributions by cascaded optical homodyning

We propose the determination of phase-space distributions of optical fields by cascaded optical homodyning, where phase-randomized balanced homodyning is used for measuring the output photon-number statistics of an unbalanced homodyne detection scheme. The phase-space point of interest is controlled by the complex amplitude of the local oscillator and a universal sampling function is sufficient for mapping the measured quadrature statistics onto the phase-space distribution.