ABSTRACT
Enhancing the electrical conductance through amorphous nondoped polymers is challenging. Here, we show that vibrational strong coupling (VSC) of intrinsically nonconducting and amorphous polymers such as polystyrene, deuterated polystyrene, and poly(benzyl methacrylate) to the vacuum electromagnetic field of the cavity enhances the electrical conductivity by at least 6 orders of magnitude compared to the uncoupled polymers. Remarkably, the observed extraordinary conductance is vibrational mode selective and occurs only under the VSC of the aromatic C-H(D) out-of-plane bending modes of the polymers. The conductance is thermally activated at the onset of strong coupling and becomes temperature-independent as the collective strong coupling strength increases. The electrical characterizations are performed without external light excitation, demonstrating the role of vacuum electromagnetic field-matter strong coupling in enhancing long-range transport even in amorphous nonconducting polymers.
ABSTRACT
We theoretically investigate charge transport through electronic bands of a mesoscopic one-dimensional system, where interband transitions are coupled to a confined cavity mode, initially prepared close to its vacuum. This coupling leads to light-matter hybridization where the dressed fermionic bands interact via absorption and emission of dressed cavity photons. Using a self-consistent nonequilibrium Green's function method, we compute electronic transmissions and cavity photon spectra and demonstrate how light-matter coupling can lead to an enhancement of charge conductivity in the steady state. We find that depending on cavity loss rate, electronic bandwidth, and coupling strength, the dynamics involves either an individual or a collective response of Bloch states, and we explain how this affects the current enhancement. We show that the charge conductivity enhancement can reach orders of magnitudes under experimentally relevant conditions.
ABSTRACT
We investigate theoretically the cavity quantum electrodynamics of the cyclotron transition for Dirac fermions in graphene. We show that the ultrastrong coupling regime characterized by a vacuum Rabi frequency comparable or even larger than the transition frequency can be obtained for high enough filling factors of the graphene Landau levels. Important qualitative differences occur with respect to the corresponding physics of massive electrons in a semiconductor quantum well. In particular, an instability for the ground state analogous to the one occurring in the Dicke model is predicted for an increasing value of the electron density.
