Effective Field Theory for Rydberg Polaritons

We study non-perturbative effects in N-body scattering of Rydberg polaritons using effective field theory (EFT). We develop an EFT in one dimension and show how a suitably long medium can be used to prepare shallow N-body bound states. We then derive the effective N-body interaction potential for Rydberg polaritons and the associated N-body contact force that arises in the EFT. We use the contact force to find the leading order corrections to the binding energy of the N-body bound states and determine the photon number at which the EFT description breaks down. We find good agreement throughout between the predictions of EFT and numerical simulations of the exact two and three photon wavefunction transmission.