GENERATING SCHRODINGER-CAT-LIKE STATES BY MEANS OF CONDITIONAL MEASUREMENTS ON A BEAM SPLITTER

A scheme for generating Schrodinger-cat-like states of a single-mode o ptical field by means of conditional measurement is proposed. Feeding a squeezed vacuum into a beam splitter and counting the photons in one of the output channels, the conditional states in the other output ch annel exhibit a number of properties that are very similar to those of superpositions of two coherent states with opposite phases. We presen t analytical and numerical results for the photon-number and quadratur e-component distributions of the conditional states and their Wigner a nd Husimi functions. Further, we discuss the effect of realistic photo counting on the states.