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Published Online March 9, 2006
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1122858

Reports

Submitted on November 21, 2005
Accepted on February 1, 2006

Generating Optical Schrödinger Kittens for Quantum Information Processing

Alexei Ourjoumtsev 1, Rosa Tualle-Brouri 1, Julien Laurat 1, Philippe Grangier 1*

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique, CNRS UMR 8501, 91403 Orsay, France.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Philippe Grangier , E-mail: philippe.grangier{at}iota.u-psud.fr

We present a detailed experimental analysis of a free-propagating light pulse prepared in a "Schrödinger kitten" state, defined as a quantum superposition of "classical" coherent states with small amplitudes. This state is generated by subtracting one photon from a squeezed vacuum beam, and it clearly presents a negative Wigner function. The predicted influence of the experimental parameters is in excellent agreement with the experimental results. The amplitude of the coherent states can be amplified to transform our "Schrödinger kittens" into bigger Schrödinger cats, providing an essential tool for quantum information processing.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Looking to the Future of Quantum Optics.
I. A. Walmsley (2008)
Science 319, 1211-1213
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)