Mesoscopic characterization of vibrational polariton transport phenomena

Recent experimental works have shown strong light-matter coupling can significantly alter chemical and physical kinetics in an infrared (IR) microcavity. In the regime of collective strong interactions between confined IR modes and molecular vibrations, hybrid light-matter states denoted vibrational polaritons emerge. The delocalization of polaritons is a fundamental feature enabling control of energy transfer and other physicochemical properties with microcavities. While prior studies have analyzed disorder-induced loss of coherence in organic microcavities which are typically strongly disordered, much less is known about the effects of structural and energetic disorders on vibrational strong coupling. In this work, we employ techniques of mesoscopic physics to provide a quantitative analysis of real-space delocalization in vibrational polaritons and weakly coupled vibrational modes in an IR Fabry-Perot cavity and demonstrate how the real-space properties of polaritonic states can be controlled by detuning, quality factor, and light-matter interaction strength. We will also provide a comparison of organic and IR microcavity polaritons and conclude by highlighting the connections between theoretically obtained trends and recent observations of polariton-assisted chemistry.