Reduced decoherence using squeezing, amplification, and antisqueezing

Abstract

Loss and decoherence are a major problem in the transmission of non-classical states of light over large distances. It was recently shown that the effects of decoherence can be reduced by applying a probabilistic noiseless attenuator before transmitting a quantum state through a lossy channel, followed by probabilistic noiseless amplification (M. Micuda et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 180503 (2012)). Here we show that similar results can be obtained for certain kinds of macroscopic quantum states by squeezing the signal before transmission, followed by deterministic amplification and anti-squeezing to restore the original amplitude of the state. This approach can greatly reduce the effects of decoherence in the transmission of non-Gaussian states, such Schrodinger cat states, without any reduction in the data transmission rate.