title: Experimental generation of squeezed cat States with an operation allowing iterative growth.
abstract: We present what is, to our knowledge, the first implementation of a "cat breeding" operation, which allows an iterative growth of cat states. We thus report the experimental generation of a squeezed cat state from two single photon Fock states, which can be seen as cat states with zero amplitude. These Fock states are mixed on a symmetrical beam splitter, and the generation is heralded by a homodyne measurement in one of the two output arms. The output state has a fidelity of 61% with an even squeezed cat state of amplitude α=1.63. This hybrid operation opens up new prospects in quantum optics, as the protocol depicted here can be iterated in order to produce new kinds of mesoscopic states.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Charles Fabry, Institut d'Optique, CNRS, Université Paris Sud, 2 avenue Augustin Fresnel, 91127 Palaiseau cedex, France.
authors.forename: Jean
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Etesse
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Charles Fabry, Institut d'Optique, CNRS, Université Paris Sud, 2 avenue Augustin Fresnel, 91127 Palaiseau cedex, France.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bouillard
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Charles Fabry, Institut d'Optique, CNRS, Université Paris Sud, 2 avenue Augustin Fresnel, 91127 Palaiseau cedex, France.
authors.forename: Bhaskar
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Kanseri
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire Charles Fabry, Institut d'Optique, CNRS, Université Paris Sud, 2 avenue Augustin Fresnel, 91127 Palaiseau cedex, France.|Institut Universitaire de France, 103 boulevard Saint-Michel, 75005 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Rosa
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Tualle-Brouri