A pr 1 99 6 Parity - dependent squeezing of light

A parity-dependent squeezing operator is introduced which imposes different SU(1,1) rotations on the even and odd subspaces of the harmonic oscillator Hilbert space. This operator is used to define parity-dependent squeezed states which exhibit highly nonclassical properties such as strong antibunching, quadrature squeezing, strong oscillations in the photon-number distribution , etc. In contrast to the usual squeezed states whose Q and Wigner functions are simply Gaussians, the parity-dependent squeezed states have much more complicated Q and Wigner functions that exhibit an interesting interference in phase space. The generation of these states by parity-dependent quadratic Hamiltonians is also discussed.