The propagation of N photons in one dimensional waveguides coupled to M qubits is discussed, both in the strong and ultrastrong qubit-waveguide coupling. Special emphasis is placed on the characterisation of the nonlinear response and its linear limit for the scattered photons as a function of N, M, qubit inter distance and light-matter coupling. The quantum evolution is numerically solved via the Matrix Product States technique. Both the time evolution for the field and qubits is computed. The nonlinear character (as a function of N/M) depends on the computed observable. While perfect reflection is obtained for N/M≅1, photon-photon correlations are still resolved for ratios N/M=2/20. Inter-qubit distance enhances the nonlinear response. Moving to the ultrastrong coupling regime, we observe that inelastic processes are \emph{robust} against the number of qubits and that the qubit-qubit interaction mediated by the photons is qualitatively modified. The theory developed in this work modelises experiments in circuit QED, photonic crystals and dielectric waveguides.
@article{arxiv.1410.5017,
title = {Nonlinear quantum optics in the (ultra)strong light-matter coupling},
author = {Eduardo Sánchez-Burillo and Juanjo García-Ripoll and Luis Martín-Moreno and David Zueco},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1410.5017},
year = {2015}
}