Lower bounds on the size of general Schr\"odinger-cat states from experimental data

Abstract

Experimental progress with meso- and macroscopic quantum states (i.e., general Schrodinger-cat states) was recently accompanied by theoretical proposals on how to measure the merit of these efforts. So far, experiment and theory were disconnected as theoretical analysis of actual experimental data was missing. Here, we consider a proposal for macroscopic quantum states that measures the extend of quantum coherence present in the system. For this, the quantum Fisher information is used. We calculate lower bounds from real experimental data. The results are expressed as an "effective size", that is, relative to "classical" reference states. We find remarkable numbers of up to 70 in photonic and atomic systems.