Optical Fock-state synthesizer - art. no. 053817

We suggest a tunable optical device to synthesize Fock states and their sup erpositions starting from a coherent source. The scheme involves an avalanc he-triggering photodetector and a ring cavity coupled to a traveling wave t hrough a cross-Kerr medium. Low quantum efficiency at the photodetector imp roves the synthesizing quality at the expense of reducing the synthesizing rate.