Disorder enhanced energy transfer with the assistance of cavity QED

Energy transfer is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature to describe the dynamics in photosynthetic complexes, molecular aggregates, and donor-acceptor systems. One detrimental factor for energy transfer efficiency is disorder, originating from inherent system properties. Here we theoretically report a new way to eliminate the negative impact of disorder in an excitonic system by strongly coupling it to a photonic cavity mode, where the cavity photon bridges spatially separated sites and builds an additional energy transport channel. Our analysis of the open quantum system shows that there are three different regimes of energy transfer characterized by the degree of disorder, molecular hopping, and Rabi splitting. Namely, with the assistance of the cavity, disorder in certain regimes can actually enhance energy transfer in the dissipating system and can even have a higher transfer efficiency than the pristine system. These results provide insight into the design of next-generation energy transfer materials leveraging hybrid light-matter states.