2004/10/31 by H. Jeong, A. P. Lund, T. C. Ralph · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.72.013801
published as Phys. Rev. A 72, 013801 (2005) · 13 pages, 9 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev. A
arxiv created 2005/04/27 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We develop an all-optical scheme to generate superpositions of macroscopically distinguishable coherent states in traveling optical fields. It non-deterministically distills coherent state superpositions (CSSs) with large amplitudes out of CSSs with small amplitudes using inefficient photon detection. The small CSSs required to produce CSSs with larger amplitudes are extremely well approximated by squeezed single photons. We discuss some remarkable features of this scheme: it effectively purifies mixed initial states emitted from inefficient single photon sources and boosts negativity of Wigner functions of quantum states.