Strong coupling of light and matter can give rise to a multitude of exciting physical effects through the formation of
hybrid light-matter states.
When
molecular materials with high transition dipole mo
ments are placed in the confined
fields of metallic microcavities or surface plasmons, Rabi splittings approaching 1 eV are observed due to the
interaction with the vacuum electromagnetic field.
This leads
to fundamental changes in the properties of the
coupled system, especially
in the ultra-strong coupling regime. While strong coupling has been extensively studied
due to the potential it offers in physics such as room temperature polariton
condensates
and thresholdless lasers,
the
implications for molecular and material science
have
remained
mostly
unexplored.
After introducing the
fundamental conce
pts, examples of modified properties of strongly cou
pled systems, such
as
chemical reactivity and
charge
and energy transport,
will be given to
illustrate the potential of light-matter states.
1-8
1. T. Schwartz et al,
Phys.
Rev. Lett.
2011,
106, 196405;
2. J. A. Hutchison et al,
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.
2012,
51, 1592
-1596;
3.
J. A. Hutchison
et al,
Ad
v. Mater.
2013,
25, 2481
;
4. S. Wang
et al
,
J. Phys. Chem. Lett.
2014,
5, 1433;
5.
A.
Shalabney
et al,
Nat. Comm.
2015,
6
, 5981;
6.
A.
Thomas
et al,
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.
2016,
55, 11462;
7. E. Orgiu, et al,
Nature Mat.
2015,
14,
1123;
8.
J. George et al,
Phys. Rev. Lett.
2016,
117, 153601.
