Experimental demonstration of macroscopic quantum coherence in Gaussian states

We witness experimentally the presence of macroscopic coherence in Gaussian quantum states using a recently proposed criterion [ E. G. Cavalcanti and M. D. Reid Phys. Rev. Lett. 97 170405 (2006)]. The macroscopic coherence stems from interference between macroscopically distinct states in phase space, and we prove experimentally that a coherent state contains these features with a distance in phase space of 0.51±0.02 shot noise units. This is surprising because coherent states are generally considered being at the border between classical and quantum states, not yet displaying any nonclassical effect. For squeezed and entangled states the effect may be larger but depends critically on the state purity.