Nature Communications (May 2024)

Hybrid architectures for terahertz molecular polaritonics

  • Ahmed Jaber,
  • Michael Reitz,
  • Avinash Singh,
  • Ali Maleki,
  • Yongbao Xin,
  • Brian T. Sullivan,
  • Ksenia Dolgaleva,
  • Robert W. Boyd,
  • Claudiu Genes,
  • Jean-Michel Ménard

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-48764-6
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 15, no. 1
pp. 1 – 8

Abstract

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Abstract Atoms and their different arrangements into molecules are nature’s building blocks. In a regime of strong coupling, matter hybridizes with light to modify physical and chemical properties, hence creating new building blocks that can be used for avant-garde technologies. However, this regime relies on the strong confinement of the optical field, which is technically challenging to achieve, especially at terahertz frequencies in the far-infrared region. Here we demonstrate several schemes of electromagnetic field confinement aimed at facilitating the collective coupling of a localized terahertz photonic mode to molecular vibrations. We observe an enhanced vacuum Rabi splitting of 200 GHz from a hybrid cavity architecture consisting of a plasmonic metasurface, coupled to glucose, and interfaced with a planar mirror. This enhanced light-matter interaction is found to emerge from the modified intracavity field of the cavity, leading to an enhanced zero-point electric field amplitude. Our study provides key insight into the design of polaritonic platforms with organic molecules to harvest the unique properties of hybrid light-matter states.