Hybrid Cavity-Metasurface Design to Enhance Molecular Strong Light-Matter Coupling at Terahertz Frequencies

Investigations of molecular polaritonic phenomena have gained prominence due to recent experiments highlighting the potential of strong light-matter coupling to modify the pathways and rates of chemical reactions. We design a hybrid metamaterial-photonic cavity architecture with a resonance located at THz frequencies to achieve strong light-matter coupling with a vibrational mode of glucose. We measure a vacuum Rabi splitting of 200 GHz, paving the way towards experiments exploiting hybrid states to alter chemical or physical properties.