EPJ Special Topics

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Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 159, 19-26 (2008)
DOI: 10.1140/epjst/e2008-00689-7

Schrödinger cat states and decoherence studies in cavity QED

S. Haroche^{1, 2}, M. Brune² and J.-M. Raimond²

¹ Collège de France, 11 place Marcelin Berthelot, 75005 Paris, France
² Département de Physique de l'ENS, 24 rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris, France

haroche@lkb.ens.fr

Published online: 21 May 2008

Abstract
We review the cavity QED experiments performed at Ecole Normale Supérieure on mesoscopic state superpositions of field states and their decoherence. We also present the perspectives for Schrödinger cat studies opened by the development of a new set-up with cavities having extremely long field damping times, in the tenth of a second range.