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Riso RR, Ronca E, Koch H. Strong Coupling to Circularly Polarized Photons: Toward Cavity-Induced Enantioselectivity. J Phys Chem Lett 2024; 15:8838-8844. [PMID: 39167677 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.4c01701] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 08/23/2024]
Abstract
The development of new methodologies for the selective synthesis of individual enantiomers is still one of the major challenges in synthetic chemistry. Many biomolecules, and also many pharmaceutical compounds, are indeed chiral. While the use of chiral reactants or catalysts has led to substantial progress in the field of asymmetric synthesis, a systematic approach applicable to general reactions has still not been proposed. In this work, we demonstrate that strong coupling to circularly polarized fields can induce asymmetry in otherwise nonselective reactions. Specifically, we show that the field induces stereoselectivity in the early stages of chemical reactions by selecting an energetically preferred direction of approach for the reagents. Although the effects observed thus far are too small to significantly drive asymmetric synthesis, our results provide a proof of principle for field-induced stereoselective mechanisms. These findings lay the groundwork for future research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rosario R Riso
- Department of Chemistry, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491 Trondheim, Norway
| | - Enrico Ronca
- Department of Chemistry, Biology and Biotechnology, University of Perugia, Via Elce di Sotto 8, 06123 Perugia, Italy
| | - Henrik Koch
- Department of Chemistry, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491 Trondheim, Norway
- Scuola Normale Superiore, Piazza dei Cavalieri 7, 56126 Pisa, Italy
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2
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Liebenthal MD, DePrince AE. The orientation dependence of cavity-modified chemistry. J Chem Phys 2024; 161:064109. [PMID: 39132792 DOI: 10.1063/5.0216993] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/02/2024] [Accepted: 07/26/2024] [Indexed: 08/13/2024] Open
Abstract
Recent theoretical studies have explored how ultra-strong light-matter coupling can be used as a handle to control chemical transformations. Ab initio cavity quantum electrodynamics calculations demonstrate that large changes to reaction energies or barrier heights can be realized by coupling electronic degrees of freedom to vacuum fluctuations associated with an optical cavity mode, provided that large enough coupling strengths can be achieved. In many cases, the cavity effects display a pronounced orientational dependence. Here, we highlight the critical role that geometry relaxation can play in such studies. As an example, we consider a recent work [Pavošević et al., Nat. Commun. 14, 2766 (2023)] that explored the influence of an optical cavity on Diels-Alder cycloaddition reactions and reported large changes to reaction enthalpies and barrier heights, as well as the observation that changes in orientation can inhibit the reaction or select for one reaction product or another. Those calculations used fixed molecular geometries optimized in the absence of the cavity and fixed relative orientations of the molecules and the cavity mode polarization axis. Here, we show that when given a chance to relax in the presence of the cavity, the molecular species reorient in a way that eliminates the orientational dependence. Moreover, in this case, we find that qualitatively different conclusions regarding the impact of the cavity on the thermodynamics of the reaction can be drawn from calculations that consider relaxed vs unrelaxed molecular structures.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marcus Dante Liebenthal
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306-4390, USA
| | - A Eugene DePrince
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306-4390, USA
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3
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Schnappinger T, Kowalewski M. Do Molecular Geometries Change Under Vibrational Strong Coupling? J Phys Chem Lett 2024; 15:7700-7707. [PMID: 39041716 PMCID: PMC11299175 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.4c01810] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/18/2024] [Revised: 07/15/2024] [Accepted: 07/19/2024] [Indexed: 07/24/2024]
Abstract
As pioneering experiments have shown, strong coupling between molecular vibrations and light modes in an optical cavity can significantly alter molecular properties and even affect chemical reactivity. However, the current theoretical description is limited and far from complete. To explore the origin of this exciting observation, we investigate how the molecular structure changes under strong light-matter coupling using an ab initio method based on the cavity Born-Oppenheimer Hartree-Fock ansatz. By optimizing H2O and H2O2 resonantly coupled to cavity modes, we study the importance of reorientation and geometric relaxation. In addition, we show that the inclusion of one or two cavity modes can change the observed results. On the basis of our findings, we derive a simple concept to estimate the effect of the cavity interaction on the molecular geometry using the molecular polarizability and the dipole moments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thomas Schnappinger
- Department of Physics, Stockholm
University, AlbaNova University Center, SE-106
91 Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Markus Kowalewski
- Department of Physics, Stockholm
University, AlbaNova University Center, SE-106
91 Stockholm, Sweden
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4
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Weight BM, Weix DJ, Tonzetich ZJ, Krauss TD, Huo P. Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics Enables para- and ortho-Selective Electrophilic Bromination of Nitrobenzene. J Am Chem Soc 2024; 146:16184-16193. [PMID: 38814893 PMCID: PMC11177318 DOI: 10.1021/jacs.4c04045] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/21/2024] [Revised: 05/15/2024] [Accepted: 05/17/2024] [Indexed: 06/01/2024]
Abstract
Coupling molecules to a quantized radiation field inside an optical cavity has shown great promise to modify chemical reactivity. In this work, we show that the ground-state selectivity of the electrophilic bromination of nitrobenzene can be fundamentally changed by strongly coupling the reaction to the cavity, generating ortho- or para-substituted products instead of the meta product. Importantly, these are products that are not obtained from the same reaction outside the cavity. A recently developed ab initio approach was used to theoretically compute the relative energies of the cationic Wheland intermediates, which indicate the kinetically preferred bromination site for all products. Performing an analysis of the ground-state electron density for the Wheland intermediates inside and outside the cavity, we demonstrate how strong coupling induces reorganization of the molecular charge distribution, which in turn leads to different bromination sites directly dependent on the cavity conditions. Overall, the results presented here can be used to understand cavity induced changes to ground-state chemical reactivity from a mechanistic perspective as well as to directly connect frontier theoretical simulations to state-of-the-art, but realistic, experimental cavity conditions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Braden M. Weight
- Department
of Physics and Astronomy, University of
Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, United States
| | - Daniel J. Weix
- Department
of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, United States
| | - Zachary J. Tonzetich
- Department
of Chemistry, University of Texas at San
Antonio, San Antonio, Texas 78249, United States
| | - Todd D. Krauss
- Department
of Chemistry, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, United States
- The
Institute of Optics, Hajim School of Engineering, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, United States
| | - Pengfei Huo
- Department
of Chemistry, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, United States
- The
Institute of Optics, Hajim School of Engineering, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, United States
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5
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Hassan M, Pavošević F, Wang DS, Flick J. Simulating Polaritonic Ground States on Noisy Quantum Devices. J Phys Chem Lett 2024; 15:1373-1381. [PMID: 38287217 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.3c02875] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/31/2024]
Abstract
The recent advent of quantum algorithms for noisy quantum devices offers a new route toward simulating strong light-matter interactions of molecules in optical cavities for polaritonic chemistry. In this work, we introduce a general framework for simulating electron-photon-coupled systems on small, noisy quantum devices. This method is based on the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) with the polaritonic unitary coupled cluster (PUCC) ansatz. To achieve chemical accuracy, we exploit various symmetries in qubit reduction methods, such as electron-photon parity, and use recently developed error mitigation schemes, such as the reference zero-noise extrapolation method. We explore the robustness of the VQE-PUCC approach across a diverse set of regimes for the bond length, cavity frequency, and coupling strength of the H2 molecule in an optical cavity. To quantify the performance, we measure two properties: ground-state energy, fundamentally relevant to chemical reactivity, and photon number, an experimentally accessible general indicator of electron-photon correlation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mohammad Hassan
- Department of Physics, City College of New York, New York, New York 10031, United States
- Department of Physics, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, New York 10016, United States
| | | | - Derek S Wang
- Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States
| | - Johannes Flick
- Department of Physics, City College of New York, New York, New York 10031, United States
- Department of Physics, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, New York 10016, United States
- Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute, 162 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010, United States
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6
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Schnappinger T, Kowalewski M. Ab Initio Vibro-Polaritonic Spectra in Strongly Coupled Cavity-Molecule Systems. J Chem Theory Comput 2023; 19:9278-9289. [PMID: 38084914 PMCID: PMC10753771 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jctc.3c01135] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/13/2023] [Revised: 11/23/2023] [Accepted: 11/27/2023] [Indexed: 12/27/2023]
Abstract
Recent experiments have revealed the profound effect of strong light-matter interactions in optical cavities on the electronic ground state of molecular systems. This phenomenon, known as vibrational strong coupling, can modify reaction rates and induce the formation of molecular vibrational polaritons, hybrid states involving both photon modes, and vibrational modes of molecules. We present an ab initio methodology based on the cavity Born-Oppenheimer Hartree-Fock ansatz, which is specifically powerful for ensembles of molecules, to calculate vibro-polaritonic IR spectra. This method allows for a comprehensive analysis of these hybrid states. Our semiclassical approach, validated against full quantum simulations, reproduces key features of the vibro-polaritonic spectra. The underlying analytic gradients also allow for optimization of cavity-coupled molecular systems and performing semiclassical dynamics simulations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thomas Schnappinger
- Department of Physics, Stockholm University, AlbaNova University Center, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Markus Kowalewski
- Department of Physics, Stockholm University, AlbaNova University Center, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
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