Our group focuses on two emerging areas of Chemistry (i) the strong light-matter coupling of molecules and materials and (ii) the chiroptical studies using Mueller polarimetry as the tool. The thrust of the activities will be on understanding the chemistry of molecules and materials under strong light-matter coupling conditions wherein the electronic/vibrational transitions are hybridised to the vacuum states of the confined electromagnetic field and the resulting quantum interactions modify the matter properties, opening up a new landscape for chemical processes. Mueller polarimetry gives the measure of the transformation of the incident polarization of light by an optically active medium. A unique feature of the technique is that it can be used to extract artifact-free circular dichroism (CD), linear dichroism (LD), circular and linear birefringence from a single experiment which is useful towards understanding the chiroptical properties of molecules and their dynamic assemblies.

Representative Publications

• Ground‐state chemical reactivity under vibrational coupling to the vacuum electromagnetic field
  Thomas, A.; George, J.; Shalabney, A.; Dryzhakov, M.; Varma, S. J.; Moran, J.; Chervy, T.; Zhong, X.; Devaux, E.; Genet, C.; Hutchison, J. A.; Ebbesen, T. W.
  Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2016, 55, 11462–11466
   
  DOI: 10.1002/anie.201605504.
  
  Highlighted as ‘Hot Paper’; blog article in: Science Translational Medicine
• Tilting a ground state reactivity landscape by vibrational strong coupling
  Thomas, A.; Lethuillier-Karl, L.; Nagarajan, K.; Vergauwe, R. M. A.; George, J.; Chervy, T.; Shalabney, A.; Devaux, E.; Genet, C.; Moran, J.; Ebbesen, T. W.
  Science 2019, 363, 615–619.
   
  DOI: 10.1126/science.aau7742
  
  Highlighted in ACS Central Science, Chemistry World, Phys.org and CNRS INC
• On the role of symmetry in vibrational strong coupling: The case of charge-transfer complexation.
  Pang, Y.; Thomas, A.; Nagarajan, K.; Vergauwe, R. M. A.; Joseph, K.; Patrahau, B.; Wang, K.; Genet, C.; Ebbesen, T. W.
  Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2020, 59, 10436–10440.
   
  DOI: 10.1002/anie.202002527
  
  Highlighted as ‘Hot Paper’
• Ground state chemistry under vibrational strong coupling: Dependence of thermodynamic parameters on the Rabi splitting energy
  Thomas, A.; Jayachandran, A.; Lethuillier-Karl, L.; Vergauwe, R. M. A.; Nagarajan, K.; Devaux, E.; Genet, C.; Moran, J.; Ebbesen, T. W.
  Nanophotonics 2020, 9, 249–255.
   
  DOI: 10.1515/nanoph-2019-0340
• Modification of Enzyme Activity by Vibrational Strong Coupling of Water
  Vergauwe, R. M. A.; Thomas, A.; Nagarajan, K.; Shalabney, A.; George, J.; Chervy, T.; Seidel, M.; Devaux, E.; Torbeev, V.; Ebbesen, T. W.
  Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2019, 58, 15324–15328.
   
  DOI: 10.1002/anie.201908876
  
  Highlighted as ‘Very Important Paper’
• Mueller Polarimetry of Chiral Supramolecular Assembly.
  Thomas, A.; Chervy, T.; Azzini, S.; Li, M.; George, J.; Genet, C.; Ebbesen, T. W.
  J. Phys. Chem. C 2018, 122, 14205–14212.
   
  DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.8b01867
• How Trap States Affect Charge Carrier Dynamics of CdSe and InP Quantum Dots: Visualization through Complexation with Viologen.
  Thomas, A.; Sandeep, K.; Somasundaran, S. M.; Thomas, K. G.
  ACS Energy Lett. 2018, 2368–2375.
   
  DOI: 10.1021/acsenergylett.8b01532