Non-conditioned generation of Schroedinger cat states in a cavity

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of a two-level atom in a cavity filled with a nonlinear medium. We show that the atom-field detuning $\delta$ and the nonlinear parameter $\chi^{(3)}$ may be combined to yield a periodic dynamics and allowing the generation of almost exact superpositions of coherent states ({\sl Schr\"odinger} cats). By analysing the atomic inversion and the field purity, we verify that any initial atom-field state is recovered at each revival time, and that a coherent field interacting with an excited atom evolves to a superposition of coherent states at each collapse time. We show that a mixed field state (statistical mixture of two coherent states) evolves towards a pure field state ({\sl Schr\"odinger} cat) as well. We discuss the validity of those results by using the field fidelity and the {\sl Wigner} function.