Tailoring soft cavities for robust molecular strong coupling
How should one design efficient chemically open optical cavities for molecular strong coupling? Addressing this question is important for the development of soft-cavity platforms for dynamically tunable light--matter interactions, where direct access to confined electromagnetic modes is essential. Conventional cavity figures of merit such as $Q/\sqrt{V}$ and cooperativity successfully describe spectral confinement and dissipation but do not fully capture the role of linewidth asymmetry between cavity and molecular degrees of freedom. Here, we systematically investigate strong coupling between TDBC dye molecules and whispering gallery modes of polystyrene microspheres by varying the microsphere radius over a broad range. To quantify the robustness of strong coupling, we define the parameter $χ= \frac{g}{\max(κ,γ)}$, where $g$ is the coupling strength, while $κ$ and $γ$ denote the cavity and molecular linewidths, respectively. Although the coupling strength decreases monotonically with increasing cavity size due to mode-volume scaling, we find that $χ$ exhibits a pronounced maximum near the condition $κ\approx γ$. This observation suggests that linewidth matching is not merely a criterion for improved spectral visibility, but reflects a dissipation-matching condition that optimizes the robustness of coherent light--matter exchange in soft-cavities. Our results provide an alternative framework for designing morphology-dependent cavities for molecular strong coupling.