Generating and monitoring Schrödinger cats in conditional measurement on a beam splitter

Abstract

Preparation of Schrödinger-cat-like states via conditional output measurement on a beam splitter is studied. In the scheme, a mode prepared in a squeezed vacuum is mixed with a mode prepared in a Fock state and photocounting is performed in one of the output channels of the beam splitter. In this way the mode in the other output channel is prepared in a Schrödinger-cat-like state that is either a photon-subtracted or a photon-added Jacobi polynomial squeezed vacuum state, depending upon the difference between the number of photons in the input Fock state and the number of photons in the output Fock state onto which it is projected. Two possible photocounting schemes are considered, and the problem of monitoring cats that are ``hidden'' in a statistical mixture of states is studied.