Methods for Producing Optical Coherent State Superpositions

TL;DR

This paper reviews various methods for generating optical coherent state superpositions, analyzing their practicality and robustness under real-world experimental conditions for quantum information and metrology applications.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of existing proposals for producing optical cat states, including new simulations considering practical experimental limitations.

Findings

Photon loss significantly affects cat state fidelity.

Detector inefficiency reduces success probability.

Certain nonlinear interactions are more feasible for state generation.

Abstract

We discuss several methods to produce superpositions of optical coherent states (also known as "cat states"). Cat states have remarkable properties that could allow them to be powerful tools for quantum information processing and metrology. A number of proposals for how one can produce cat states have appeared in the literature in recent years. We describe these proposals and present new simulation and analysis of them incorporating practical issues such as photon loss, detector inefficiency, and limited strength of nonlinear interactions. We also examine how each would perform in a realistic experiment.