Reconstruction of non-classical cavity field states with snapshots of their decoherence

Understand

The state of a microscopic system encodes its complete quantum description, from which the probabilities of all measurement outcomes are inferred.

• Being a statistical concept, the state cannot be obtained from a single system realization.
• It can be reconstructed from an ensemble of copies, by performing measurements on different realizations.
• Reconstructing the state of a set of trapped particles shielded from their environment is an important step for the investigation of the quantum to classical boundary.