Generation of heralded optical cat states by photon addition

Optical cat states, the nonclassical superposition of two quasi-classical coherent states, serve as a basis for gedankenexperiments testing quantum physics on mesoscopic scales and are increasingly recognized as a resource for quantum information processing. Here, we report the first experimental realization of optical cat states by adding a photon to a squeezed vacuum state; so far only photon-subtraction protocols have been realized. Photon addition gives us the advantage of using heralded signal photons as experimental triggers, and we can generate cat states at rates exceeding 2.3×10⁵ counts per second. Our most highly squeezed vacuum input state shows {-}8.9 dB squeezing, but such squeezing entails some degradation---in this case, 15.1 dB antisqueezing. Even so, our approach enables us to synthesize a state with a maximum cat amplitude of |α|≈1.77 whose Wigner distribution still shows pronounced negative parts. Our experimental implementation with controlled photon addition demonstrates a powerful and robust building block for advanced quantum state engineering and shows that heralded photon addition can be controlled well and performed at high rates.