Practical effects in cat state breeding

Abstract

A cat state is a superposition of macroscopically distinct states. In quantum optics one such type of state is a superposition of distinct coherent states. Recently, a protocol has been proposed for preparing large optical cat states from a resource of smaller ones. We consider the effects of mode-mismatch and loss in the preparation of large cat states using this protocol with a view to understand experimental limitations. (This paper is written in an experimental rapid communication format).