'Parity effect' based generation of Schrodinger cat like states in high-Q microcavity

It has been very recently shown that the dynamics of a two-level atom coupled to a bimodal degenerate cavity field by two-photon processes, is characterized by an interesting nonclassical dynamical behavior christened ''parity effect''. This effect consists in the fact that if the cavity field is prepared leaving one mode in its vacuum state and exciting the other one in a generic linear combination of even number states only, or odd number states only, then there exists an appropriate intensity-dependent interval of time after which the bimodal cavity exhibits macroscopically different parity-dependent quantum features. We show that this nonclassical effect is at the origin of the possibility of generating Schrodinger cat like states of the bimodal field appropriately selecting its initial conditions