Prof. Hsing-Ta Chen, University of Notre Dame, "Navigating Various Disorders and Dynamics in Strongly Coupled Light-Matter Systems"

Strong light-matter interactions hold great promise for modulating molecular and material properties, including chemical reactivity, energy transfer, and charge conductivity, via polaritonic states. In realistic chemical and material systems, disorder arising from thermal fluctuations and structural defects is inevitable and has a significant impact on the polaritonic state. However, disorder is often considered a perturbative effect and is usually omitted from models of light-matter dynamics and spectroscopy. In this talk, I aim to explore dynamical simulations of strongly coupled systems under various forms of disorder, including random dipole orientations, electromagnetic field fluctuations, and electron-phonon coupling. Contrary to the intuition that disorder inherently hinders exciton transport and suppresses strong coupling phenomena, our findings suggest that disorder can actually facilitate access to hidden degrees of freedom, specifically optical dark states. We demonstrate how these states can be leveraged to modulate exciton transport properties and introduce unique spectroscopic signatures.