Long-lived Quantum Coherence between Macroscopically Distinct States in Superradiance

Abstract

The dephasing influence of a dissipative environment reduces linear superpositions of macroscopically distinct quantum states (sometimes also called Schrödinger cat states) usually almost immediately to a statistical mixture. This process is called decoherence. Couplings to the environment with a certain symmetry can lead to slow decoherence. In this Letter we show that the collective coupling of a large number of two-level atoms to an electromagnetic field mode in a cavity that leads to the phenomena of superradiance has such a symmetry, at least approximately. We construct superpositions of macroscopically distinct quantum states decohering only on a classical time scale and propose an experiment in which the extraordinarily slow decoherence should be observable.

4 pages of revtex

References in corpus (2)

• Decoherence Free Subspaces for Quantum Computation
• WKB for a damped spin

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