Motional states of atoms in cavity QED
Andrew C. Doherty, A. S. Parkins, S. M. Tan, Daniel F. Walls · Physical Review A · 1998
We investigate the quantum-mechanical state of motion of an atom strongly coupled to an optical cavity. The atomic motion is coupled to the environment through cavity decay and this leads to nonclassical effects due to the dissipative evolution. The scheme is examined as an atomic position measurement and the symmetry of the cavity field mode is found to lead to Schr\"odinger cat states of the motion in the selective evolution.