Weak value amplification of atomic cat states Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. We show the utility of the weak value amplification to observe the quantum interference between two close lying atomic coherent states in a post-selected atomic cat state, produced in a system of N identical two-level atoms weakly interacting with a single photon field. Through the observation of the negative parts of the Wigner distribution of the post-selected atomic cat state, we find that the post-selected atomic cat state becomes more nonclassical when the post-selected polarization state of the single photon field tends toward becoming orthogonal to its pre-selected state. We show that the small phase shift in the post-selected atomic cat state can be amplified via measuring the peak shift of its phase distribution when the post-selected state of the single photon field is nearly orthogonal to its pre-selected state. We find that the amplification factor of 15 [5] can be obtained for a sample of 10 [100] atoms. This effectively provides us with a method to discriminate between two close lying states on the Bloch sphere. We discuss possible experimental implementation of the scheme, and conclude with a discussion of the Fisher information.

published proceedings

  • New Journal of Physics

altmetric score

  • 0.5

author list (cited authors)

  • Huang, S., & Agarwal, G. S.

citation count

  • 8

complete list of authors

  • Huang, Sumei||Agarwal, Girish S

publication date

  • September 2015