Transient and Fast Generation of Bose-Einstein-Condensate Macroscopic Quantum Superposition States via Impurity Catalysing

Abstract

Macroscopic quantum superposition is an important embodiment of the core of the quantum theory. The engineering of macroscopic quantum superposition states is the key to quantum communication and quantum computation. Thus, we present a theoretical proposal to engineer macroscopic quantum superposition (MQS) states of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) via impurity atoms. We firstly propose a deterministic generation scheme of transient multi-component MQS states of the BEC via impurity catalysing. It is found that the structure of the generated transient multi-component MQS states can be manipulated by the impurity number parity. Then, we illustrate the influence of impurity number parity on MQS states through three aspects: generation of approximately orthogonal continuous-variable cat states, manipulation of non-classicality in phase space, and switching of non-classical degree of BEC states. The influence of the BEC decoherence on the generation of MQS states is discussed by the fidelity between actually generated states and target states. Finally, the results show that the high-fidelity multi-component MQS states of the BEC can be fast generated by increasing the coherent interaction strength between impurities and the BEC in an open system.

Keywords

• macroscopic quantum superposition
• quantum communication
• Bose-Einstein condensate
• impurity
• catalysing