Non-classicalities exhibited by the superposition of Schrödinger’s cat state with the vacuum of the optical field

Abstract

Superposition of two coherent states, the Schrodinger’s cat state, can exhibit different nonclassical properties having foundational applications in quantum information processing. We consider the ‘superposition of Schrodinger’s cat state with the vacuum state (SCVS)’ of the optical field. We discuss different witness of nonclassicality properties such as lower- and higher-order squeezing (viz., squeezing, Hong & Mandel’s fourth-order squeezing, amplitude-squared squeezing) and sub-Poissonian photon statistics. Further, we discuss the negativity of the Wigner function of SCVS indicating the nonclassicality of the state under investigation. We find that the vacuum state contribution in SCVS exhibits different nonclassicalities under some conditions stronger where the nonclassicalities exhibited by the state without vacuum state contribution are weaker.