We propose an engineered reservoir inducing the relaxation of a cavity field towards non-classical states. It is made up of two-level atoms crossing the cavity one at a time. Each atom-cavity interaction is first dispersive, then resonant, then dispersive again. The reservoir pointer states are those produced by an effective Kerr Hamiltonian acting on a coherent field. We thereby stabilize squeezed states and quantum superpositions of multiple coherent components in a cavity having a finite damping time. This robust method could be implemented in state-of-the-art experiments and lead to interesting insights into mesoscopic quantum state superpositions and into their protection against decoherence.
@article{arxiv.1011.5057,
title = {Non-classical field state stabilization in a cavity by reservoir engineering},
author = {Alain Sarlette and Jean-Michel Raimond and Michel Brune and Pierre Rouchon},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1011.5057},
year = {2012}
}