Towards effective shaping of large-amplitude high-fidelity Schrodinger cat states by inefficient photon number resolving detection

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to generate high-fidelity, large-amplitude Schrödinger cat states using photon subtraction from squeezed vacuum states, analyzing the effects of detector inefficiency on success rates.

Contribution

It introduces an efficient scheme for creating optical Schrödinger cat states with high fidelity and large amplitude, considering detector imperfections and optimizing parameters.

Findings

Achieved generation of SCS with amplitude 4.2 and fidelity >0.99

Demonstrated the impact of detector inefficiency on success probability

Suggested optimal parameters for imperfect detection scenarios

Abstract

We propose an efficient way to generate optical analogs of both even and odd Schrodinger cat states (SCSs) with high fidelity, large amplitude and reasonable generation rate. The resource consumed are a single-mode squeezed vacuum state (SMSV) and possibly a single photon or nothing. We report the generation of even (odd) SCS with amplitude 4.2, fidelity higher than 0.99 and reasonable generation rate by subtraction of 30(31) photons from SMSV by ideal photon number detection. In the case of inefficient detectors, maintaining SCS size and its fidelity at the same level as in the case of ideal detectors results in a dramatic decrease in the success probability. In order to have certain harmony between the three characteristics (large amplitude, high fidelity and acceptable success probability for the generation scheme) in the case of imperfect detection, highly transmitting beam splitters should not be used and number of the subtracted photons must be reduced to 10(11).