QM/MM Modeling of Vibrational Polariton Induced Energy Transfer and Chemical Dynamics

Abstract

Vibrational strong coupling (VSC) provides a novel means to modify chemical reactions and energy transfer pathways. To efficiently model chemical dynamics under VSC in the collective regime, herein a hybrid quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical (QM/MM) cavity molecular dynamics (CavMD) scheme is developed and applied to an experimentally studied chemical system. This approach can achieve linear scaling with respect to the number of molecules for a dilute solution under VSC by assuming that each QM solute molecule is surrounded by an independent MM solvent bath. Application of this approach to a dilute solution of Fe(CO)${}_5$ in n-dodecane under VSC demonstrates polariton dephasing to the dark modes and polariton-enhanced molecular nonlinear absorption. These simulations predict that strongly exciting the lower polariton may provide an energy transfer pathway that selectively excites the equatorial CO vibrations rather than the axial CO vibrations. Moreover, these simulations also directly probe the cavity effect on the dynamics of the Fe(CO)${}_5$ Berry pseudorotation reaction for comparison to recent two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy experiments. This theoretical approach is applicable to a wide range of other polaritonic systems and provides a tool for exploring the use of VSC for selective infrared photochemistry.

19 pages, 5 figures in the main text

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Cited by in corpus (6)

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• Ultrafast dynamics of CN radical reactions with chloroform solvent under vibrational strong coupling
• Non-Hermitian molecular dynamics simulations of exciton-polaritons in lossy cavities
• Collective Polaritonic Effects on Chemical Dynamics Suppressed by Disorder
• Mechanistic principles of exciton-polariton relaxation
• Coherent nonlinear optical probe for cavity-dressed vibrational mode mixing: Multidimensional double-quantum coherence and photon-echo spectroscopy