Letter Entanglement-induced population trapping by Schrodinger's cat

Gao‐xiang Li, Jin-sheng Peng

Benedetto Militello, ANTONINO MESSINA

Christopher C. Gerry, R. Grobe

We propose an experiment that is a variation of the Schrödinger's cat ′paradox' wherein the entanglement between a microscopic system and a macroscopic system is of primary interest. The experiment involves tunable entanglement and serves as a model for controllable decoherence in the context of cavity quantum electrodynamics where atoms interact dispersively with a cavity field initially in a coherent state. The interaction produces an entanglement between the atom and the field, and the degree of entanglement can be probed by subjecting the atom to resonant classical radiation after it leaves the cavity. The amplitude of the resulting Rabi oscillations reflects the degree of the entanglement, there being no Rabi oscillations when the entanglement is maximum. We show that the cavity damping does not affect the experiment.

Alexei Ourjoumtsev

Xiang Hao, Shijun Zhu

Marco Frasca

Abstract We show that for an atom in a cavity in the strong coupling regime, flopping between Schrödinger cat states, devised as a superposition of displaced number states, can be accomplished. Beside, the Rabi frequency can be set to zero, so that population trapping or localization can be accomplished. These states could be proved to be useful for quantum computation