Chemistry Seminar: Jay Foley

Event interval: Single day event
Campus location: Chemistry Building (CHB)
Campus room: CHB 102
Accessibility Contact: chem59x@uw.edu
Event Types: Academics,Lectures/Seminars
Link: https://chemistry.charlotte.edu/directory/jay-foley-phd

"Looking out for the tiniest lights: controlling chemistry and quantum states by confining light to small volumes"

Polariton chemistry exploits the strong interaction between quantized excitations in molecules and quantized photon states in optical cavities to affect chemical reactivity.  Molecular polaritons have been experimentally realized by the coupling of electronic, vibrational, and rovibrational transitions to photon modes, which has spurred tremendous theoretical effort to model and explain how polariton formation can influence chemistry.  I will present recent work in my group aimed at making the accurate computational modeling of molecular polaritons routine.  In particular, I will describe a class of approaches called ab initio cavity quantum electrodynamics that treat molecular electronic degrees of freedom and photon degrees of freedom on equal quantum mechanical footing, and can provide atomistic detail into the structure and reactivity of molecules under strong light-matter coupling. I will discuss applications of those techniques to modeling chemistry under electronic strong coupling, and in using cavity-molecule interactions to generate entanglement. I will also highlight some pedagogical developments that we have developed to introduce students to computational molecular science tools within the context of strong light-matter coupling.

Associate Professor Jay Foley – Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina Charlotte
Host: Niri Govind