A path towards single molecule vibrational strong coupling in a Fabry-Pérot microcavity

Interaction between light and molecular vibrations leads to hybrid light-matter states called vibrational polaritons. Even though many intriguing phenomena have been predicted for single-molecule vibrational strong coupling (VSC), several studies suggest that these effects tend to be diminished in the many-molecule regime due to the presence of dark states. Achieving single or few-molecule vibrational polaritons has been constrained by the need for fabricating extremely small mode volume infrared cavities. In this theoretical work, we propose an alternative strategy to achieve single-molecule VSC in a cavity-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (CERS) setup, based on the physics of cavity optomechanics. We then present a scheme harnessing few-molecule VSC to thermodynamically couple two reactions, such that a spontaneous electron transfer can now fuel a thermodynamically uphill reaction that was non-spontaneous outside the cavity.

Ultrafast imaging of polariton propagation and interactions

Semiconductor excitations can hybridize with cavity photons to form exciton-polaritons (EPs) with remarkable properties, including light-like energy flow combined with matter-like interactions. To fully harness these properties, EPs must retain ballistic, coherent transport despite matter-mediated interactions with lattice phonons. Here we develop a nonlinear momentum-resolved optical approach that directly images EPs in real space on femtosecond scales in a range of polaritonic architectures. We focus our analysis on EP propagation in layered halide perovskite microcavities. We reveal that EP-phonon interactions lead to a large renormalization of EP velocities at high excitonic fractions at room temperature. Despite these strong EP-phonon interactions, ballistic transport is maintained for up to half-exciton EPs, in agreement with quantum simulations of dynamic disorder shielding through light-matter hybridization. Above 50% excitonic character, rapid decoherence leads to diffusive transport. Our work provides a general framework to precisely balance EP coherence, velocity, and nonlinear interactions.

Transient exciton-polariton dynamics in WSe2 by ultrafast near-field imaging

Van der Waals (vdW) materials offer an exciting platform for strong light-matter interaction enabled by their polaritonic modes and the associated deep subwavelength light confinement. Semiconductor vdW materials such as WSe₂ are of particular interest for photonic and quantum integrated technologies because they sustain visible-near-infrared (VIS-NIR) exciton-polariton (EP) modes at room temperature. Here, we develop a unique spatiotemporal imaging technique at the femtosecond-nanometric scale and observe the EP dynamics in WSe₂ waveguides. Our method, based on a novel ultrafast broadband intrapulse pump-probe near-field imaging, allows direct visualization of EP formation and propagation in WSe₂ showing, at room temperature, ultraslow EP with a group velocity of v _g ~ 0.017c. Our imaging method paves the way for in situ ultrafast coherent control and extreme spatiotemporal imaging of condensed matter.

Finite-difference time-domain analysis for the dynamics and diffraction of exciton-polaritons

We adopted a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) scheme to simulate the dynamics and diffraction of exciton-polaritons, governed by the coupling of polarization waves with electromagnetic waves. The polarization wave, an approximate solution to the Schrödinger's equation at low frequencies, essentially captures the exciton behavior. Numerical stability of the scheme is analyzed and simple examples are provided to prove its validity. The system considered is both temporally and spatially dispersive, for which the FDTD analysis has attracted less attention in the literature. Here, we demonstrate that the FDTD scheme could be useful for studying the optical response of the exciton-polariton and its dynamics. The diffraction of a polariton wave from a polaritonic grating is also considered, and many sharp resonances are found, which manifest the interference effect of polariton waves. This illustrates that the measurement of transmittance or reflectance near polariton resonance can reveal subwavelength features in semiconductors, which are sensitive to polariton scattering.

Localization of phonon polaritons in disordered polar media

The localization of the hybrid modes of phonons and photons in polar matter is investigated in the presence of random scatterers theoretically. We employ the self-consistent generalized Born-Huang approach to derive effective equations describing the phonon-polariton fields. Based on these equations, the density of states and various localization properties are exploited in two-dimensional systems both analytically and numerically within the framework of the Anderson model with a non-Hermitian effective Hamiltonian. Consequently, it is shown that the disorder effect brings some intriguing features which include the appearance of the localized states in the polariton bottleneck in the energy spectrum and the collapse of the energy gap. In addition, an analysis is given of the polariton level-spacing distribution.