arXiv subjects

Noel C. Giebink

Publications and source records attributed to Noel C. Giebink.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

When do molecular polaritons behave like optical filters?

This review outlines several linear optical effects featured by molecular polaritons arising in the collective strong light-matter coupling regime. Under weak laser irradiation and when the single-molecule light-matter coupling can be neglected (often in the limit when the number of molecules per photon mode is large), we show that the excited-state molecular dynamics under collective strong coupling can be exactly replicated without the cavity using a shaped (or ``filtered'') laser, whose field amplitude is enhanced by the cavity quality factor, shining on the bare molecules. As a consequence, the absorption within a cavity can be understood as the overlap between the polariton transmission and the bare molecular absorption, suggesting that polaritons act in part as optical filters. This framework demystifies and provides a straightforward explanation for a large class of experiments and theoretical models in molecular polaritonics, highlighting that the same effects can be achieved without the cavity with shaped laser pulses. With a few modifications, this simple conceptual picture can also be adapted to understand the incoherent nonlinear response of polaritonic systems. This review establishes a clear distinction between polaritonic phenomena that can be fully explained through classical linear optics and those that require a quantum electrodynamics approach. It also highlights the need to differentiate between effects that necessitate polaritons (i.e., hybrid light-matter states) and those that can occur in the weak coupling regime. We further discuss that certain quantum optical effects like fluorescence can be partially described as optical filtering, whereas some others like cavity-induced Raman scattering go beyond this. Further exploration in these areas is needed to uncover novel polaritonic phenomena beyond optical filtering.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2024

Collective Polaritonic Effects on Chemical Dynamics Suppressed by Disorder

We present a powerful formalism, disordered collective dynamics using truncated equations (d-CUT-E), to simulate the ultrafast quantum dynamics of molecular polaritons in the collective strong coupling regime, where a disordered ensemble of $N\gg10^{6}$ molecules couples to a cavity mode. Notably, we can capture this dynamics with a cavity hosting a single \textit{effective} molecule with $\sim N_{bins}$ electronic states, where $N_{bins}\ll N$ is the number of bins discretizing the disorder distribution. Using d-CUT-E we conclude that strong coupling, as evaluated from linear optical spectra, can be a poor proxy for polariton chemistry. For highly disordered ensembles, total reaction yield upon broadband excitation is identical to that outside of the cavity, while narrowband excitation produces distinct reaction yields solely due to differences in the initial states prepared prior to the reaction.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2024

Extracting accurate light-matter couplings from disordered polaritons

The vacuum Rabi splitting (VRS) in molecular polaritons stands as a fundamental measure of collective light-matter coupling. Despite its significance, the impact of molecular disorder on VRS is not fully understood yet. This study delves into the complexities of VRS amidst various distributions and degrees of disorder. Our analysis provides precise analytical expressions for linear absorption, transmission, and reflection spectra, along with a "sum" rule, offering a straightforward protocol for extracting accurate collective light-matter coupling values from experimental data. Importantly, our study cautions against directly translating large VRS to the onset of ultrastrong coupling regime. Furthermore, for rectangular disorder, we witness the emergence of narrow side bands alongside a broad central peak, indicating an extended coherence lifetime even in the presence of substantial disorder. These findings not only enhance our understanding of VRS in disordered molecular systems but also open avenues for achieving prolonged coherence lifetimes between the cavity and molecules via the interplay of collective coupling and disorder.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2020

Lasing in the Space Charge-Limited Current Regime

We introduce an analytical model for ideal organic laser diodes based on the argument that their intrinsic active layers necessitate operation in the bipolar space charge-limited current regime. Expressions for the threshold current and voltage agree well with drift-diffusion modeling of complete p-i-n devices and an analytical bound is established for laser operation in the presence of annihilation and excited-state absorption losses. These results establish a foundation for the development of organic laser diode technology.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2020

Enhanced optical nonlinearities under strong light-matter coupling

Optical microcavities and metallic nanostructures have been shown to significantly modulate the dynamics and spectroscopic response of molecular systems. We present a study of the nonlinear optics of a model consisting of $N$ anharmonic multilevel systems (e.g., Morse oscillators) undergoing collective strong coupling with a resonant infrared microcavity. We find that, under experimentally accessible conditions, molecular systems in microcavities may have nonlinear phenomena significantly intensified due to the high quality of polariton resonances and the enhanced microcavity electromagnetic energy density relative to free space. Particularly large enhancement of multiphoton absorption happens when multipolariton states are resonant with bare molecule multiphoton transitions. In particular, our model predicts two-photon absorption cross section enhancements by several orders of magnitude relative to free space when the Rabi splitting $Ω_R$ is approximately equal to the molecular anharmonic shift $2Δ$. Our results provide rough upper bounds to resonant nonlinear response enhancement factors as relaxation to dark states is treated phenomenologically. Notably, ensembles of two-level systems undergoing strong coupling with a cavity (described by the Tavis-Cummings model) show no such optical nonlinearity enhancements, highlighting the rich phenomenology afforded by multilevel anharmonic systems. Similar conclusions are expected to hold for excitonic systems that share features with our model (e.g., molecular dyes with accessible S_0 -> S_1 -> S_2 transitions) and strongly interact with a UV-visible cavity.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2016

Large spatially-resolved rectification in a donor-acceptor molecular heterojunction

We demonstrate that rectification ratios (RR) of >250 (>1000) at biases of 0.5 V (1.2 V) are achievable at the two-molecule limit for donor-acceptor bilayers of pentacene on fullerene on Cu using scanning tunneling spectroscopy and microscopy. Using first-principles calculations, we show that the system behaves as a molecular Schottky diode with a tunneling transport mechanism from semiconducting pentacene to Cu-hybridized metallic fullerene. Low-bias RRs vary by two orders-of-magnitude at the edge of these molecular heterojunctions due to increased Stark shifts and confinement effects.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗