Disorder-enhanced transport in a chain of lossy dipoles strongly coupled to cavity photons

TL;DR

This paper investigates how strong light-matter coupling in a disordered dipole chain within an optical cavity can enhance transport properties, especially in the presence of losses, by converting dark states into polaritonic states with long-range transport.

Contribution

It reveals that disorder can enhance transport in strongly coupled dipole-cavity systems by transforming dark states into polaritonic states, a novel mechanism for disorder-assisted transport.

Findings

Disorder causes dark states to gain photonic character in strong coupling.

Enhanced transport occurs in lossy dipoles due to disorder-induced polaritonic states.

The effect is more pronounced with increased dipole losses.

Abstract

We study the interplay between disorder and light-matter coupling by considering a disordered one-dimensional chain of lossy dipoles coupled to a multimode optical cavity, through a microscopically derived Hamiltonian. Such a system, hosting polaritonic excitations, may be realized experimentally in a wide range of platforms under strong light-matter coupling. By analyzing both the eigenspectrum and the driven-dissipative transport properties of our system, we find that in the strong-coupling regime, increasing disorder leads almost uncoupled dark states to acquire a photonic part, allowing them to inherit polaritonic long-range transport characteristics. Crucially, we show that this disorder-enhanced transport mechanism is increasingly noticeable when the considered dipoles are lossier.