Polariton Chemistry: Molecules in Cavities and Plasmonic Media
The strong coupling of confined electromagnetic modes and material excitations in the UV-visible, IR, and THz ranges gives rise to hybrid light-matter excitations known as polaritons. While polaritons have been subject of much study in the field of inorganic semiconductor optics, it has been only within the last decade that they have permeated into the molecular sciences, with the prospect that microcavities and nanostructured plasmonic media could significantly alter the physicochemical properties of room-temperature molecular materials including their photoinduced and thermally-activated reactivity, or charge and energy transport characteristics. In this Special Issue, we wish to highlight the theoretical and experimental advances of this burgeoning interdisciplinary field at the crossroads of chemistry and physics, as well as to provide an account of its peculiar challenges and future prospects.
Topics covered include, but are not limited to:
- Photochemistry and nonadiabatic dynamics in cavities
- Photophysics: Charge and energy transport in cavities
- Photophysics: Light emission from polaritonic media
- Thermally-activated ground state reactivity (kinetics and mechanism) in cavities
- Cavity effects on nonlinear optics spectroscopy
- Single and few molecule strong coupling
- Polariton condensation with organic molecules
- Plasmonic media and molecular nanophotonics
- Ultrastrong light-matter coupling with molecules
Guest Editors
Timur Shegai, Chalmers University of Technology
Wei Xiong, University of California San Diego
Joel Yuen-Zhou, University of California San Diego
JCP Editor
Lasse Jensen, Penn State University