When molecules are coupled to an optical cavity, new light-matter hybrid states, so- called polaritons, are formed due to quantum light-matter interactions. With the experimental demonstrations of modifying chemical reactivities by forming polaritons under strong light-matter interactions, theorists have been encouraged to develop new methods to simulate these systems and discover new strategies to tune and control reactions. In this talk, I will first introduce the concept of polariton and discuss its relevance in the recent molecular polariton and polariton chemistry investigations. I will then focus on recently observed phenomena, which is referred to as the vibrational strong coupling- induced chemistry. When the cavity resonance is tuned to the molecular vibrations instead, ground-state chemical reaction modifications have been demonstrated experimentally, though its mechanistic principle remains unclear. I will present a new theory that potentially provides the answer to this problem.
Pengfei (Frank) Huo is an Associate Professor of Chemistry and Optics at the University of Rochester, NY. He received his B.S. in chemistry from Lanzhou University of China, and his Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry at Boston University. After a postdoc at Caltech, he joined the Department of Chemistry at U of R as an Assistant Professor and was later promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure in 2022. His group develops new quantum dynamics approaches to investigate chemical reactivities when they are enabled by intrinsically quantum mechanical behavior, and his recent research interests focus on molecular polariton, quantum optics, and cavity quantum electrodynamics. Frank received several national awards, including the National Science Foundation CAREER award (2018), the Cottrell Scholar award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (2020), the OpenEye Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in Computational Chemistry from ACS (2020), and the Hirschfelder Visiting Scholar award from the University of Wisconsin, Madison (2023).