Strong Coupling, Disordered Environments, and Chemistry Under Illumination

In this talk, I will highlight our recent work in the area of polaritonics and molecules in cavities, whereby we have sought to understand how molecules collectively subjected to strong light-matter coupling can change their behavior given the weak coupling of one individual molecule to a field. I will focus on molecules under illumination, with and without disorder, and I will show what interesting features emerge and what interesting features do not emerge under our simulations. In particular, I will highlight the possibility that one can use strong coupling to achieve large localization of vibrational excitation. Finally, I will propose a few new directions for modeling nonadiabatic motion in the presence of strong light-matter coupling.