Conditional generation of optical Schr\"odinger cat states

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method to conditionally generate optical Schrödinger cat states by interfering superpositions of coherent states and using homodyne measurement, resulting in amplified state separation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel conditional generation scheme for optical Schrödinger cat states with amplified separation using interference and homodyne detection.

Findings

Successful amplification of coherent state separation.

Conditional preparation of symmetric superpositions.

Potential applications in quantum information processing.

Abstract

Given a source of two coherent state superpositions with small separation in a traveling wave optical setting, we show that by interference and balanced homodyne measurement it is possible to conditionally prepare a symmetrically placed superposition of coherent states around the origo of the phase space. The separation of the coherent states in the superposition will be amplified during the process.