Generating nonclassical quantum input field states with modulating filters

*Correspondence: [email protected] 1Department of Physics, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, Wales SY23 2BZ, UK Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Abstract We give explicit constructions of quantum dynamical filters which generate nonclassical states (coherent states, cat states, shaped single and multi-photon states) of quantum optical fields as inputs to general quantum Markov systems. The filters will be quantum harmonic oscillators damped by the input fields, and we exploit the fact that the cascaded filter and system will have a Lindbladian that is naturally Wick-ordered in the filter modes. In particular the initialization of the modulating filter will determine the signal state generated.