Background: Material properties can be drastically altered through s trong interactions with light confined by an optical cavity Under the right conditions, material excitations hybridize with cavity photons to create polaritons Schr ödinger’s cat superposition states that inherit the wave like nature of light while maintaining local structur e Polariton formation manifests experimentally as a characteristic Rabi splitting of a cavity transmission fringe when i t is tuned on resonan ce with a strong molecular or material absorption feature ( 1a). This light matter hybridization occurs much the same way that atomic orbitals hybridize to form molecular orbitals with new energies and properties. It should perhaps not come as a surprise that polari tons can demonstrate behavior
dramatically distinct from free space matter We seek to harness the emergent properties that arise under strong light matter interactions to optimize molecular and material function for applications across synthetic chemistry materials science, and quantum information The introduction of confined helical light fields will allow fine control over the symmetries and emergent physics of these systems. 1 Here, we p ropose efforts aimed towards a first demonstration of chiral polaritonic devices for functionalization of monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides.

Principal Investigator:  Marissa Weichman (CHEM)

Seed start and end date: 
December 1, 2022 - November 30, 2023