Congratulations to Courtney Ragle! Courtney’s paper, “Tuning Vibrational Coupling Strength Between Hyperbolic Media and Organic Molecules,” published in Nanophotonics, has been selected as this week’s Spotlight Publication.聽This work was a collaborative effort between VINSE faculty members Lauren Buchanan and Josh Caldwell.
Vibrational strong coupling work over the years has focused on standard Fabry-Perot cavity systems and strong oscillators to explore the fundamentals of these light-matter interactions. This work specifically explores weaker oscillators within a widely available polymer and a sub-diffractional light confinement system to better elucidate available tuning parameters for increasing coupling strength of vibrational bonds to confined light modes. We highlight the relationship of coupling strength to material thicknesses, polariton dispersion behavior, and isotopic enrichment of a hyperbolic material within a real system to highlight the capability of this field to move toward more tailored control. Experimentally, we see clear trends in the use of these parameters to increase coupling strengths across all investigated vibrational bond modes that correspond directly to associated group velocities of the hosted polaritons at individual mid-IR wavelengths. With a heightened understanding of the sub-diffractional system tuning abilities, this sets up the field to move toward extremely targeted vibrational bond mode coupling.
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