Nonclassicality of multi-photon-added cat states
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Abstract
Multi-photon-added cat states are constructed by repeatedly applying the creation operator to a cat state. We study in detail their photon-number distribution, $Q$ parameter, squeezing properties, and Wigner function. We show that photon addition induces a $π$ phase shift in the original parity configuration whenever an odd number of photons is added, reflected as swapped vanishing probabilities and phase space displacements at the origin. Remarkably, the same process drives these states into a sub-Poissonian regime regardless of the relative phase between their coherent state components, making them valuable resources for quantum imaging, at the cost of losing quadrature squeezing, but gaining amplitude-squared one. We also discuss how these states can be generated using existing hardware.