Coherent states engineering with linear optics: Possible and impossible tasks

The general transformation of the product of coherent states $prod_{i=1}^N|alpha_i>$ to the output state $prod_{i=1}^M|beta_i>$ ($N=M$ or $N eq M$), which is realizable with linear optical circuit, is characterized with a linear map from the vector $(alpha^{ast}_1,...,alpha^{ast}_N)$ to $(beta^{ast}_1,...,beta^{ast}_M)$. A correspondence between the transformations of a product of coherent states and those of a single photon state is established with such linear maps. It is convenient to apply this linear transformation method to design any linear optical scheme working with coherent states. The examples include message encoding and quantum database searching. The limitation of manipulating entangled coherent states with linear optics is also discussed.