Exploring the Delocalization of Dark States in a Multimode Optical Cavity

The strong coupling between molecules and photonic modes in a Fabry–Pérot optical cavity, which forms hybrid light-matter states called polaritons, has been demonstrated as a promising route to control the rates of chemical reactions. However, theoretical studies, which largely employ models with a single cavity mode, cannot explain the experimentally observed kinetic changes. While simplified multimode models with one spatial dimension can capture experimental features involving the polariton states, it is unclear whether they can also describe the dark states. Here, we study the delocalization of dark states for molecules in a multimode cavity, accounting for the three-dimensional nature of experimental setups. Accounting for energetic and orientational disorder, but fixing Rabi splitting and intermolecular distances (i.e., no positional disorder), we find that the delocalization of the dark states scales linearly with the number of molecules in the plane parallel to the cavity mirrors, in contrast to one-dimensional multimode models. Adding layers of molecules along the axis normal to the mirrors increases the delocalization much less. Similar to the one-dimensional models, the dark-state delocalization is enhanced for smaller values of molecular energetic disorder, relative to the light-matter coupling, and cavities with longer longitudinal length. Our work indicates that for certain phenomena, understanding the dark states under strong light-matter coupling might require a proper multimode description of the optical cavity.