Enlargement of optical Schrödinger's cat states
By Demid V. Sychev, Alexander Ulanov, A. A. Pushkina, M. Richards, I. Fedorov, Alexander I. Lvovsky. Nature Photonics, 2016
198 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Superpositions of macroscopically distinct quantum states, introduced in Schrödinger's famous Gedankenexperiment, are an epitome of quantum ‘strangeness’ and a natural tool for determining the validity limits of quantum physics. The optical incarnation of Schrödinger's cat (SC)—the superposition of two opposite-amplitude coherent states—is also the backbone of continuous-variable quantum information processing. However, the existing preparation methods limit the amplitudes of the component coherent states, which curtails the state's usefulness for fundamental and practical applications. Here, we convert a pair of negative squeezed SC states of amplitude 1.15 to a single positive SC state of amplitude 1.85 with a success probability of ∼0.2. The protocol consists in bringing the initial states into interference on a beamsplitter and a subsequent heralding quadrature measurement in one of the output channels. Our technique can be realized iteratively, so arbitrarily high amplitudes can, in principle, be reached. The amplitude of a Schrödinger's cat (SC) state — superposed coherent state — is increased using a homodyne measurement. A pair of negative SC states with amplitude of 1.15 is probabilistically converted to a single positive SC state with amplitude of 1.85.
Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/15e24b01c2dc875192bb70d4b029e2c52a8c6b31
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In Artificial Intelligence
In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Citations in the corpus
- Macroscopic quantum states: Measures, fragility, and implementations (2017, methodology): “Larger sizes, up to |α|2 = 3.2 have been reported in Gerrits et al. (2010); Neergaard-Nielsen 44 et al. (2006); Sychev et al. (2017); Yukawa et al. (2013) using similar protocols.”