2004/12/07 by P. K. Pathak, G. S. Agarwal · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.71.043823
published as Phys. Rev. A 71, 043823 (2005) · submitted to Phys. Rev. A
arxiv created 2004/12/07 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
Using resonant interaction between atoms and the field in a high quality cavity, we show how to generate a superposition of many mesoscopic states of the field. We study the quasi-probability distributions and demonstrate the nonclassicality of the superposition in terms of the zeroes of the Q-function as well as the negativity of the Wigner function. We discuss the decoherence of the generated superposition state. We propose homodyne techniques of the type developed by Auffeves et al [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 230405 (2003)] to monitor the superposition of many mesoscopic states.