  In papers by Lynch [Phys. Rev. A41, 2841 (1990)] and Gerry and Urbanski
[Phys. Rev. A42, 662 (1990)] it has been argued that the phase-fluctuation
laser experiments of Gerhardt, B\"uchler and Lifkin [Phys. Lett. 49A, 119
(1974)] are in good agreement with the variance of the Pegg-Barnett phase
operator for a coherent state, even for a small number of photons. We argue
that this is not conclusive. In fact, we show that the variance of the phase in
fact depends on the relative phase between the phase of the coherent state and
the off-set phase $\phi_0$ of the Pegg-Barnett phase operator. This off-set
phase is replaced with the phase of a reference beam in an actual experiment
and we show that several choices of such a relative phase can be fitted to the
experimental data. We also discuss the Noh, Foug\`{e}res and Mandel [Phys.Rev.
A46, 2840 (1992)] relative phase experiment in terms of the Pegg-Barnett phase
taking post-selection conditions into account.

Quantum Physics