Photon-subtracted squeezed thermal state: Nonclassicality and decoherence

Abstract

We investigate nonclassical properties of the field states generated by subtracting any number of photons from the squeezed thermal state (STS). It is found that the normalization factor of photon-subtracted STS (PSSTS) is a Legendre polynomial of squeezing parameter $r$ and average photon number $\mathrm{n\ifmmode \bar{}\else \={}\fi{}}$ of the thermal state. Expressions of several quasiprobability distributions of PSSTS are derived analytically. Furthermore, the nonclassicality is discussed in terms of the negativity of the Wigner function (WF). It is shown that the WF of single PSSTS always has negative values if $\mathrm{n\ifmmode \bar{}\else \={}\fi{}}<\mathrm{sinh}{}^{2}r$ at the phase space center. The decoherence effect on PSSTS is then included by analytically deriving the time evolution of WF. The results show that the WF of single PSSTS has negative value if $2\ensuremath{\kappa}t<\mathrm{ln}{1\ensuremath{-}(2\mathrm{n\ifmmode \bar{}\else \={}\fi{}}+1)(\mathrm{n\ifmmode \bar{}\else \={}\fi{}}\ensuremath{-}\mathrm{sinh}{}^{2}r)/[(2\mathfrak{N}+1)(\mathrm{n\ifmmode \bar{}\else \={}\fi{}}\mathrm{cosh}2r+\mathrm{sinh}{}^{2}r)]}$, which is dependent not only on average number $\mathfrak{N}$ of thermal photons in the environment, but also on $\mathrm{n\ifmmode \bar{}\else \={}\fi{}}$ and $r$.