No Arabic abstract
For a small fraction of hot CO2 molecules immersed in a liquid-phase CO2 thermal bath, classical cavity molecular dynamics simulations show that forming collective vibrational strong coupling (VSC) between the C=O asymmetric stretch of CO2 molecules and a cavity mode accelerates hot-molecule relaxation. The physical mechanism underlying this acceleration is the fact that polaritons, especially the lower polariton, can be transiently excited during the nonequilibrium process, which facilitates intermolecular vibrational energy transfer. The VSC effects on these rates (i) resonantly depend on the cavity mode detuning, (ii) cooperatively depend on molecular concentration or Rabi splitting, and (iii) collectively scale with the number of hot molecules, which is similar to Dickes superradiance. For larger cavity volumes, due to a balance between this superradiant-like behavior and a smaller light-matter coupling, the total VSC effect on relaxation rates can scale slower than $1/N$, and the average VSC effect per molecule can remain meaningful for up to $N sim10^4$ molecules forming VSC. Moreover, we find that the transiently excited lower polariton prefers to relax by transferring its energy to the tail of the molecular energy distribution rather than equally distributing it to all thermal molecules. Finally, we highlight the similarities of parameter dependence between the current finding with VSC catalysis observed in Fabry-Perot microcavities.
Recent experiments have observed that the chemical and photophysical properties of molecules can be modified inside an optical Fabry-Perot microcavity under collective vibrational strong coupling (VSC) conditions, and such modification is currently not well understood by theory. In an effort to understand the origin of such cavity induced phenomena, some recent studies have focused on the effect of the cavity environment on the nonlinear optical response of the molecular subsystem. Here, we use a recently proposed protocol for classical cavity molecular dynamics (CavMD) simulations to numerically investigate the linear and nonlinear response of liquid carbon dioxide under such VSC conditions following an optical pulse excitation. We find that applying a strong pulse of excitation to the lower hybrid light-matter state, i.e., the lower polariton (LP), can lead to an overall molecular nonlinear absorption which is enhanced by up to two orders of magnitude relative to the excitation outside the cavity. This polariton-enhanced multiphoton absorption also causes an ultrashort LP lifetime (0.2 ps) under strong illumination. Unlike usual polariton relaxation processes -- whereby polaritonic energy transfers directly to the manifold of singly excited vibrational dark states -- under the present mechanism, the LP transfers energy directly to the manifold of higher vibrationally excited dark states; these highly excited dark states subsequently relax to the manifold of singly excited states with a lifetime of tens of ps. Because the present mechanism is generic in nature, we expect these numerical predictions to be experimentally observed in different molecular systems and in cavities with different volumes.
We introduce a heterodimer model in which multiple mechanisms of vibronic coupling and their impact on energy transfer can be explicitly studied. We consider vibronic coupling that arises through either Franck-Condon activity in which each site in the heterodimer has a local electron-phonon coupling and as Herzberg-Teller activity in which the transition dipole moment coupling the sites has an explicit vibrational mode-dependence. We have computed two-dimensional electronic-vibrational (2DEV) spectra for this model while varying the magnitude of these two effects and find that 2DEV spectra contain static and dynamic signatures of both types of vibronic coupling. Franck-Condon activity emerges through a change in the observed excitonic structure while Herzberg-Teller activity is evident in the appearance of significant side-band transitions that mimic the lower-energy excitonic structure. A comparison of quantum beating patterns obtained from analysis of the simulated 2DEV spectra shows that this technique can report on the mechanism of energy transfer, elucidating a means of experimentally determining the role of specific vibronic coupling mechanisms in such processes.
Introduction (2) Experimental background: Test beds (8) Theoretical approaches: A microscopic model(10) The electron-phonon coupling(14)Time and energy scales(15) Theoretical methods(19)Numerical calculations(28) Incoherent vs. coherent transport (28) Inelastic tunneling spectroscopy: Experimental background(31) Theoretical considerations:the weak coupling limit(36) Theoretical considerations: moderately strong coupling(41)Comparison of approximation schemes(48)Asymmetry in IETS(51)The origin of dips in IETS signals(53)Computational approaches (56) Effects of electron-electron(e-e)interactions (63) Noise (66) Non-linear conductance phenomena (73) Heating and heat conduction: General considerations(77) Heat generation(81) Heat conduction(85) Junction temperature(88) Current induced reactions (91) Summary and outlook (91)
Motivated by recent experimental observation (see e.g., I.V.Rubtsov, Acc. Chem. Res., v. 42, 1385 (2009)) of vibrational energy transport in CH_2O_N and CF_2_N molecular chains (N = 4 - 12), in this paper we present and solve analytically a simple one dimensional model to describe theoretically these data. To mimic multiple conformations of the molecular chains, our model includes random off-diagonal couplings between neighboring sites. For the sake of simplicity we assume Gaussian distribution with dispersion sigma for these coupling matrix elements. Within the model we find that initially locally excited vibrational state can propagate along the chain. However the propagation is neither ballistic nor diffusion like. The time T_m for the first passage of the excitation along the chain, scales linearly with N in the agreement with the experimental data. Distribution of the excitation energies over the chain fragments (sites in the model) remains random, and the vibrational energy, transported to the chain end at $t=T_m$ is dramatically decreased when sigma is larger than characteristic interlevel spacing in the chain vibrational spectrum. We do believe that the problem we have solved is not only of intellectual interest (or to rationalize mentioned above experimental data) but also of relevance to design optimal molecular wires providing fast energy transport in various chemical and biological reactions.