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American Journal of Physics

Quantum Superposition: Counterintuitive Consequences of Coherence, Entanglement and Interference

L. E. Ballentine

Published Oct 14, 2008• 3 citations
Publisher
DOI
10.1119/1.2973810

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We investigate coherent population transfer in double-$\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ and diamond-type four-level systems driven by two pairs of time-delayed laser pulses. We show that the relative phase between the pulses induces interference so that the adiabatic passage dynamics is only possible for a particular phase. Both pulse area and phase are control knobs that can be used to prepare specific coherent superpositions using counterintuitive and intuitive pulse sequences. Since the diamond-type four-level system maps the Hamiltonian of two interacting two-level systems, the schemes can be used to manipulate entanglement. In particular we propose robust schemes to prepare specific entangled states by phase control with time-delayed pulse sequences.
Schrödinger's cat originates from the famous thought experiment querying the counterintuitive quantum superposition of macroscopic objects. As a natural extension, several "cats" (quasi-classical objects) can be prepared into coherent quantum superposition states, which is known as multipartite cat states demonstrating quantum entanglement among macroscopically distinct objects. Here, we present a highly scalable approach to deterministically create flying multipartite Schrödinger's cat states by reflecting coherent-state photons from a microwave cavity containing a superconducting qubit. We perform full quantum state tomography on the cat states with up to four photonic modes and confirm the existence of quantum entanglement among them. We also witness the hybrid entanglement between discrete-variable states (the qubit) and continuous-variable states (the flying multipartite cat) through a joint quantum state tomography. Our work provides an enabling step for implementing a series of quantum metrology and quantum information processing protocols based on cat states.
In this paper we discuss the nonclassical properties of quantum superpositions of coherent states of light. Using general expressions for the Wigner functions of superposition states we analyze the consequences of quantum interference between coherent states. We describe in detail nonclassical properties of a superposition of two coherent states. In particular, we study the oscillatory behavior of the photon number distribution of the even and odd coherent states. We show under which conditions a superposition of two coherent states can exhibit second- and fourth-order squeezing or sub-Poissonian photon statistics. We examine the sensitivity of nonclassical effects such as oscillations in the photon number distribution or second-order squeezing to dissipation. We demonstrate that quantities such as the photon number distribution and interferences in phase space are highly sensitive to even a quite small dissipative coupling, because they depend on all moments of the field observables, and higher moments decay more rapidly than lower moments. Quantities such as quadrature squeezing, on the other hand, are more robust against dissipation because they involve only lower moments. Finally, we find a remarkable effect whereby fourth-order squeezing is generated by damping.