Inelastic Scattering of a Photon by a Quantum Phase Slip

Spontaneous decay of a single photon is notoriously inefficient process in nature irrespective the frequency range. We report that quantum phase-slip fluctuation high-impedance superconducting waveguides can split incident microwave into large number lower-energy photons with near unit probability. The underlying inelastic photon-photon interaction has no analogs non-linear optics. Instead, measured rates are explained without adjustable parameters framework new model impurity Luttinger liquid. Our result connects circuit electrodynamics to critical phenomena two-dimensional boundary field theories, important physics strongly-correlated systems. lifetime data represents rare example verified and useful many-body simulation.