Detecting the degree of macroscopic quantumness using an overlap measurement




Our joint work with the groups of Hyunseok Jeong in Korea, and Tim Ralph in Australia, has been published in JOSA B 31, 3057. We investigate how to experimentally detect a recently proposed measure to quantify macroscopic quantum superpositions [Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 220401 (2011)], namely, “macroscopic quantumness” I. Schemes based on overlap measurements for harmonic oscillator states and for qubit states are extensively investigated. Effects of detection inefficiency and coarse-graining are analyzed in order to assess feasibility of the schemes.