GENERATING AND MONITORING SCHRODINGER CATS IN CONDITIONAL MEASUREMENTON A BEAM SPLITTER

Preparation of Schrodinger-cat-like states via conditional output meas urement on a beam splitter is studied. In the scheme, a mode prepared in a squeezed vacuum is mixed with a mode prepared in a Pock state and photocounting is performed in one of the output channels of the beam splitter. In this way the mode in the other output channel is prepared in a Schrodinger-cat-like state that is either a photon-subtracted or a photon-added Jacobi polynomial squeezed vacuum state, depending upo n the difference between the number of photons in the input Fock state and the number of photons in the output Pock state onto which it is p rojected. Two possible photocounting schemes are considered, and the p roblem of monitoring cats that are ''hidden'' in a statistical mixture of states is studied.