Photon-instanton collider implemented by a superconducting circuit

Abstract

Instantons, spacetime-localized quantum field tunneling events, are ubiquitous in correlated condensed matter and high energy systems. However, their direct observation through collisions with conventional particles has not been considered possible. We show how recent advances in circuit quantum electrodynamics, specifically, the realization of galvanic coupling of a transmon qubit to a high-impedance transmission line, allows the observation of inelastic collisions of single microwave photons with instantons (phase slips). We develop a formalism for calculating the photon-instanton cross section, which should be useful in other quantum field theoretical contexts. In particular, we show that the inelastic scattering probability can significantly exceed the effect of conventional Josephson quartic anharmonicity, and reach order-unity values.

See also the accompanying experimental paper, arXiv:2010.02099. v2: Extensive supplemental added. v3: Published version

References in corpus (7)

• Charge insensitive qubit design derived from the Cooper pair box
• Observation of Quantized Conductance in Neutral Matter
• Inelastic Microwave Photon Scattering off a Quantum Impurity in a Josephson-Junction Array
• Generating two continuous entangled microwave beams using a dc-biased Josephson junction
• Critical fluorescence of a transmon at the Schmid transition
• Microwave spectroscopy of a weakly-pinned charge density wave in a superinductor
• Coupling a Superconducting Qubit to a Left-Handed Metamaterial Resonator

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Absence versus Presence of Dissipative Quantum Phase Transition in Josephson Junctions
• Inelastic decay from integrability
• Tuning the inductance of Josephson junction arrays without SQUIDs
• Observation of the Schmid-Bulgadaev dissipative quantum phase transition
• Direct detection of down-converted photons spontaneously produced at a single Josephson junction
• Josephson transmission line revisited
• Functional Renormalization Group Approach to Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics
• Bloch oscillations in a transmon embedded in a resonant electromagnetic environment
• Quantum simulation of the microscopic to macroscopic crossover using superconducting quantum impurities
• Revisiting dissipation-driven phase transition in a Josephson junction
• Photon-instanton scattering in a superconducting circuit: Beyond the very high impedance regime