Molding Molecular and Material Properties by Strong Light-Matter Coupling

TL;DR

This paper reviews how strong light-matter coupling can create hybrid states affecting material properties, with potential applications across chemistry, quantum information, and biology, using simple setups involving mirrors and absorbing materials.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals, structures, and applications of strong light-matter coupling, highlighting recent discoveries and potential for new material and chemical phenomena.

Findings

Strong coupling influences phase transitions and conductivity.

Vacuum-induced effects can alter chemical reactions.

Simple mirror-based setups enable strong light-matter interactions.

Abstract

When atoms come together and bond, we call these new states molecules, and their properties determine many aspects of our daily life. Strangely enough, it is conceivable for light and molecules to bond, creating new hybrid light-matter states with far-reaching consequences for these strongly coupled materials. Even stranger, there is no `real' light needed to obtain the effects, it simply appears from the vacuum, creating `something from nothing'. Surprisingly, the setup required to create these materials has become moderately straightforward. In its simplest form, one only needs to put a strongly absorbing material at the appropriate place between two mirrors, and quantum magic can appear. Only recently has it been discovered that strong coupling can affect a host of significant effects at a material and molecular level, which were thought to be independent of the `light' environment: phase transitions, conductivity, chemical reactions, etc. This review addresses the fundamentals of this opportunity: the quantum mechanical foundations, the relevant plasmonic and photonic structures, and a description of the various applications, connecting materials chemistry with quantum information, nonlinear optics and chemical reactivity. Ultimately, revealing the interplay between light and matter in this new regime opens attractive avenues for many applications in the material, chemical, quantum mechanical and biological realms.