1305.1701 (Zhang-qi Yin et al.)

Raising Schrödinger's cat with a levitated nanodiamond through
spin-opto-mechanical coupling    [PDF]

Zhang-qi Yin, Tongcang Li, Xiang Zhang, L. M. Duan

We propose a method to generate and detect Schr\"{o}dinger's cat state and superposition of arbitrary Fock states for the oscillational mode of an optically levitated nanocrystal diamond. The nonlinear interaction required for generation of non-Gaussian quantum states is enabled through the spin-opto-mechanical coupling with a built-in nitrogen-vacancy center inside the nanodiamond. The proposed method allows raising of Schr\"{o}dinger's cat states from single atoms to much larger objects with millions of atoms and observation of the associated spatial quantum interference of the mesoscopic nanodiamond under reasonable experimental conditions.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.1701