Experimental preparation and manipulation of squeezed cat states via an all-optical in-line squeezer

TL;DR

This paper presents an all-optical in-line squeezer capable of efficiently preparing and manipulating high-rate squeezed cat states, advancing their practical use in quantum information processing.

Contribution

The work introduces a high-performance, deterministic all-optical in-line squeezer that enables high-rate generation and phase manipulation of squeezed cat states without electro-optic conversions.

Findings

Generation rate of 2 kHz for squeezed cat states

Phase of quadrature squeezing can be controlled by squeezer conditions

Elimination of off-line squeezer requirements for high-bandwidth operations

Abstract

The squeezed cat state, an essential quantum resource, can be used for quantum error correction and slowing decoherence of the optical cat state. However, preparing a squeezed cat state with high generation rate, and effectively manipulating it, remain challenging. In this work, a high-performance all-optical in-line squeezer is developed to prepare a squeezed cat state and manipulate the phase of the quadrature squeezing. This scheme has the advantages that the phase of the quadrature squeezing of the squeezed cat state can be manipulated by changing the working condition of the squeezer, and that a higher generation rate can be achieved via the deterministic squeezing operation of the in-line squeezer. The generation rate of squeezed cat states reaches 2 kHz, the same as that of the initial cat state. The all-optical in-line squeezer proposed here removes the requirements of electro-optic and opto-electric conversions necessary for an off-line squeezer, thus enabling high-bandwidth squeezing operations on non-Gaussian states. These results provide an efficient method to prepare and manipulate optical squeezed cat states, which makes a step closer to their applications in all-optical quantum information processing.