Ruifang Dong, Anders Tipsmark, Amine Laghaout, Leonid A. Krivitsky, Miroslav Ježek, and Ulrik Lund Andersen, "Generation of picosecond pulsed coherent state superpositions," J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 31, 1192-1201 (2014)
Abstract:
We present the generation of approximated coherent state superpositions - referred to as Schrödinger cat
states - by the process of subtracting single photons from picosecond pulsed squeezed states of light. The
squeezed vacuum states are produced by spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) in a periodically poled KTiOPO4 crystal while the single photons are probabilistically subtracted using a beamsplitter and a single photon detector. The resulting states are fully characterized with time-resolved homodyne quantum state tomography. Varying the pump power of the SPDC, we generated different states which exhibit non-Gaussian behavior.