Proposal for a mesoscopic cavity QED realization of the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state

A proposal is made for obtaining a mesoscopic realization of the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) ''all or nothing'' contradiction between quantum mechanics and local realism in the context of cavity QED. The proposed experiment involves three separated micromaser cavities, each initially prepared in a coherent state, which are then entangled by dispersive atom-field interactions followed by selective ionization of a single atom that has passed through all three cavities. The cavities are then probed individually by single atoms manipulated to obtain a measurement of the parity of the cavity fields. Using an isomorphism between coherent-state cavity fields and a spin-1/2 system, we show how this experiment gives rise to violations of local realism in the manner of GHZ.