Many-molecule reaction triggered by a single photon in polaritonic chemistry
Abstract
The second law of photochemistry states that in most cases, no more than one molecule is activated for an excited-state reaction for each photon absorbed by a collection of molecules. In this work, we demonstrate that it is possible to trigger a many-molecule reaction using only one photon by strongly coupling the molecular ensemble to a confined light mode. The collective nature of the resulting hybrid states of the system (the so-called polaritons) leads to the formation of a polaritonic "supermolecule" involving the degrees of freedom of all molecules, opening a reaction path on which all involved molecules undergo a chemical transformation. We theoretically investigate the system conditions for this effect to take place and be enhanced.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1704.07261,
title = {Many-molecule reaction triggered by a single photon in polaritonic chemistry},
author = {Javier Galego and Francisco J. Garcia-Vidal and Johannes Feist},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.07261},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
5 pages, 2 figures