Stabilization of nonclassical states of the radiation field in a cavity by reservoir engineering

Phys Rev Lett. 2011 Jul 1;107(1):010402. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.010402. Epub 2011 Jul 1.

Abstract

We propose an engineered reservoir inducing the relaxation of a cavity field towards nonclassical states. It is made up of two-level atoms crossing the cavity one at a time. Each atom-cavity interaction is first dispersive, then resonant, then dispersive again. The reservoir pointer states are those produced by an effective Kerr Hamiltonian acting on a coherent field. We thereby stabilize squeezed states and quantum superpositions of multiple coherent components in a cavity having a finite damping time. This robust decoherence protection method could be implemented in state-of-the-art experiments.