Adaptive Phase Measurements of Optical Modes: Going Beyond the Marginal $Q$ Distribution

In standard single-shot measurements of the phase of an optical mode, the phase and amplitude quadratures are jointly measured, and the latter information discarded. These techniques are consequently suboptimal. Here I suggest an adaptive scheme, whereby the phase is estimated from the results so far and fed back to control the phase of the local oscillator so as to measure the (estimated) phase quadrature only. I show that adaptive phase measurements can approach optimal phase measurements for states with both low and high mean photon numbers.