On the generation and identification of optical Schrödinger cats

Abstract

We discuss the possibility of generating and detecting, by a tomographic reconstruction of the Wigner function, a macroscopic superposition of two coherent states. The superposition state is created using a conditioned measurement on the polarisation of a probe photon entangled to a coherent state. The entanglement is obtained using a Kerr cell inserted in a Mach–Zender interferometer. Some hint about generation of GHZ states is given as well.