Spontaneous decay of a single photon is a notoriously inefficient process in nature irrespective of the frequency range. We will show that a quantum phase-slip fluctuation in high-impedance superconducting waveguides can split a single incident microwave photon into a large number of lower-energy photons with a near unit probability. The underlying inelastic photon-photon interaction has no analogs in non-linear optics. Instead, the measured decay rates are explained without adjustable parameters in the framework of a new model of a quantum impurity in a Luttinger liquid. Our result connects circuit quantum electrodynamics to critical phenomena in two-dimensional boundary quantum field theories, important in the physics of strongly-correlated systems. The photon lifetime data represents a rare example of verified and useful quantum many-body simulation.
The ZOOM link will be sent on Wednesday morning to the Physics Faculty, Graduate Student, PDRA, and AP mailing lists. If you are not on one of those lists and are interested in attending, please email Suzanne Hallihan at shalliha@illinois.edu for the link.
