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Updated: Jul 26, 2025

Measurement of Coherence Decay in GaMnAs Using Femtosecond Four-wave Mixing
Published on: December 3, 2013
Modification of ground-state chemical reactivity via light-matter coherence in infrared cavities
Wonmi Ahn1, Johan F Triana2, Felipe Recabal2
1UNAM - National Nanotechnology Research Center and Institute of Materials Science and Nanotechnology, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey.
Abstract:
Reaction-rate modifications for chemical processes due to strong coupling between reactant molecular vibrations and the cavity vacuum have been reported; however, no currently accepted mechanisms explain these observations. In this work, reaction-rate constants were extracted from evolving cavity transmission spectra, revealing resonant suppression of the intracavity reaction rate for alcoholysis of phenyl isocyanate with cyclohexanol. We observed up to an 80% suppression of the rate by tuning cavity modes to be resonant with the reactant isocyanate (NCO) stretch, the product carbonyl (CO) stretch, and cooperative reactant-solvent modes (CH). These results were interpreted using an open quantum system model that predicted resonant modifications of the vibrational distribution of reactants from canonical statistics as a result of light-matter quantum coherences, suggesting links to explore between chemistry and quantum science.
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