Joel Yuen-Zhou, UCSD

February 25th, 2-3pm Central (Registration Details Below)

Using Polariton Condensates to Drive Chemical Reactions

Confinement of molecules in optical microcavities gives rise to collective strong light-matter coupling and the formation of hybrid light-matter modes known as polaritons. While these modes potentially offer unusual chemical reactivity, their use is limited by their very short lifetimes owing to an entropic flow of population into the so-called dark modes. However, past a certain threshold of optical pumping, the population of polariton modes can become self-catalytic, giving rise to a nonequilibrium version of Bose-Einstein condensation. Polariton condensation has been routinely demonstrated with organic dyes at room temperature since the last decade. I will provide a chemical outlook for these condensates, demonstrating that their reactivity can be rather rich. I will focus on vibrational polariton condensates and their use to modify rates of thermally-activated electron transfer processes.

Reference: S. Pannir-sivajothi, J. A. Campos-González-Angulo, L. A. Martínez-Martínez, S. Sinha, J. Yuen-Zhou, Driving chemical reactions with polariton condensates, arXiV:2106.12156, accepted in Nat. Commun. (2022)