Generation of a superposition of multiple mesoscopic states of radiation in a resonant cavity

Abstract

Using resonant interaction between atoms and the field in a high-quality cavity, we show how to generate a superposition of many mesoscopic states of the field. We study the quasiprobability distributions and demonstrate the nonclassicality of the superposition in terms of the zeros of the $Q$ function as well as the negativity of the Wigner function. We discuss the decoherence of the generated superposition state. We propose homodyne techniques of the type developed by [Auffeves et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 230405 (2003)] to monitor the superposition of many mesoscopic states.