Path integral quantization of the electromagnetic field in nonlinear dielectric materials
Quantum Physics
2026-05-06 v1 Optics
Abstract
We construct a quantum theory of light in nonlinear dielectric media with dispersion and absorption. We employ a mesoscopic model for the light-matter interaction that include a fourth-order nonlinearity in the material response. Quantization is performed by constructing an effective action in a path-integral formalism by integrating out matter and bath degrees of freedom. We show how a nonlinear response function associated with Kerr nonlinearity is obtained through the model and, after full field quantization, we derive the Feynman rules from this theory.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2605.03836,
title = {Path integral quantization of the electromagnetic field in nonlinear dielectric materials},
author = {Arman Kashef and Oscar Perearnau Herrero and Alexander Szameit and Marco Ornigotti and Stefan Scheel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.03836},
year = {2026}
}