Quantum limit to transparency

Abstract

We argue that no material can be made completely transparent to light as long as it has a nontrivial index of refraction. The quantum decay of photons into phonons is an ineliminable source of attenuation. This survives even once all other excitations have been gapped away, impurities have been removed, and the temperature has been set to zero. Restricting for simplicity to the case of a superfluid, we determine via effective field theory methods the corresponding low-frequency contribution to the imaginary part of the index of refraction. This scales as $ω^4$ and induces a nonanalyticity of the real part for $ω\rightarrow 0$. We also extend our result to large coherent electromagnetic fields, such as those of a laser, showing that the effect can receive strong nonlinear enhancements. Our result is a genuine quantum lower bound to the transparency of a medium.