Conditional preparation of arbitrary atomic Dicke states

We propose an experimentally accessible procedure for conditional preparation of highly non-classical states of collective spin of an atomic ensemble. The quantum state engineering is based on a combination of QND interaction between atoms and light previously prepared in a non-Gaussian state using photon subtraction from squeezed vacuum beam, homodyne detection on the output light beam, and a coherent displacement of atomic state. The procedure is capable of non-deterministic preparation of a wide class of superpositions of atomic Dicke states. We present several techniques to optimize the performance of the protocol and maximize the trade-off between fidelity of prepared state and success probability of the scheme.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, RevTeX