לוח שנה משולב

When matter is placed in the confined field of electromagnetic radiation, it can lead to modified and even new properties. This is of great interest from both the fundamental point of view as well as for many radiation engineering applications. For instance, the field confinement can lead to effects such as extraordinary optical transmission, enhanced absorption and emission of light, high-resolution spectroscopy and imaging. Under certain conditions, the light-matter interaction can become so strong that it enters the so-called strong coupling regime where new hybrid light-matter states are formed, offering a vast potential for chemistry and biology that has hardly been explored.
In this talk, an introduction to strong coupling of optically-active substances with confined optical modes will be presented. Strong coupling of molecular vibrational transitions in the infra-red region will be particularly elaborated with new prospects to modify molecular and structural processes. The hybridization of molecular vibrational transitions by the confined electromagnetic field of an optical cavity, leading to the formation of vibro-polariton states, should have direct consequences on the properties of the material. Probing nonlinear properties of the coupled system to understand the character of the hybrid states will be addressed. In addition, new directions for exploiting strong light-matter interactions for (bio) molecular spectroscopy and other practical applications will be discussed.