Polaritonics for next generation materials

Strong coupling offers novel routes for controlling the physical and chemical properties of materials. This symposium will highlight the latest advances in this emerging field of "polaritonic materials", promoting discussions and exposing a broad audience to this topic, which stands at the interface between material sciences and quantum optics.

Scope:

Over the past decade, it has gradually been revealed that polaritonic systems, where light and matter are strongly coupled, can exhibit pronounced modifications in the properties of materials, with examples including chemical reactivity of molecules, enhanced exciton and charge transport, crystallization processes, and many others. The accumulated research around this phenomenon has led to the emergence of a new field of "polaritonic materials", opening the route to the development of new tools to engineer materials and new methods to control chemical reactions. At the same time, the properties of these polaritonic materials and their behavior, as observed in experiments, raise many conceptual and theoretical challenges, which are yet to be resolved.

This symposium aims to highlight the latest progress in the research of polaritonic materials and polaritonic chemistry, covering both experiments and theory, with the goal of connecting researchers and students working on various aspects of this topic and promoting open discussions within the expanding polaritonics community. Moreover, the program will be designed to appeal to a broader audience, providing an ideal entry point for researchers in related areas into this exciting, multidisciplinary field. Topical sessions will address electronic and vibrational strong coupling in solid, liquid, and gas-phase molecular systems, as well as emerging low-dimensional semiconductor systems.

Hot topics to be covered by the symposium:

• Energy and charge transport in polaritonic materials
• Polaritons for future optoelectronic technologies
• Cavity-control of chemical reactions
• Spectroscopy, photophysics, and photochemistry of polaritonic systems
• Novel modeling approaches for confined light-matter interactions

Confirmed list of invited speakers:

• Cristiano Ciuti, Université Paris Cité, France
• Milena De Giorgi, Istituto Nanotec, CNR-Lecce, Italy
• Thomas W. Ebbesen, Thomas W. Ebbesen, University of Strasbourg, France
• Jerome Faist, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
• Daniele Fausti, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
• Francisco J. Garcia-Vidal, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain
• Cyriaque Genet, Université de Strasbourg, France
• Jino George, IISER Mohali, India
• Kenji Hirai, Institute Electronic Science, Hokkaido University, Japan
• Junichiro Kono, Physics, and Materials Science, Rice University, USA
• Angel Rubio, Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, Hamburg, Germany
• Greg Scholes, Princeton University, USA
• Blake S. Simpkins, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, USA
• Marissa L. Weichman, Princeton University, USA
  

Publication:

Proceedings will be published in the Journal of Chemical Physics (JCP) in the form of a special issue on "Polaritonics for Next Generation Materials"