Can ultrastrong coupling change ground state chemical reactions?

Understand

Recent advancements on the fabrication of organic micro- and nanostructures have permitted the strong collective light-matter coupling regime to be reached with molecular materials.

• Pioneering works in this direction have shown the effects of this regime in the excited state reactivity of molecular systems and at the same time has opened up the question of whether it is possible to introduce any modifications in the electronic ground energy landscape which could affect chemical thermodynamics and/or kinetics.
• In this work, we use a model system of many molecules coupled to a surface-plasmon field to gain insight on the key parameters which govern the modifications of the ground-state Potential Energy Surface (PES).
• Our findings confirm that the energetic changes per molecule are determined by single-molecule-light couplings which are essentially local, in contrast with those of the electronically excited states, for which energetic corrections are of a collective nature.