Entanglement of two-mode Schrödinger cats

Abstract

Quantum superpositions of coherent states are produced both in microwave and optical domains, and are considered realizations of the famous “Schroedinger cat” state. The recent progress shows an increase in the number of components and the number of modes involved. Our work gives a theoretical treatment of multicomponent two-mode Schroedinger cat states. We consider a class of single-mode states, which are superpositions of N coherent states lying on a circle in the phase space. In this class we consider an orthonormal basis created by rotationally-invariant circular states (RICS). A two-mode extension of this basis is created by splitting a single-mode RICS on a balanced beam-splitter. After performing a symmetric (Loewdin) orthogonalization of the sets of coherent states in both modes we obtain the Schmidt decomposition of the two-mode state, and therefore an analytic expression for its entanglement. We show that the states obtained by splitting a RICS are generalizations of Bell states of two qubits to the case of N -level systems encoded into superpositions of coherent states on the circle, and we propose for them the name of generalized quasi-Bell states. We show that an exact probabilistic teleportation of arbitrary superposition of coherent states on the circle is possible with such a state used as shared resource.