It was recently shown that large amounts of squeezing can be obtained in the Jaynes-Cummings model by choosing the initial photon number to be large enough. A general property of squeezed states can be used to derive the complementary result that for small initial photon numbers the squeezing that is produced will be relatively weak for all times. It also illustrates the fact that for some quantum effects to be substantial, large photon numbers are required.

• Received 31 August 1988

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.39.1556