In the present work we face the question: Whether and to what extent the analysis and simulation of photoinduced processes changes by going beyond the classical Maxwell description. Here we generalize the idea of the ensemble trajectories, traditionally introduced for electron-nuclear problems, to electron-photon correlated systems, where we focus on well-known semiclassical methods like mean-field and path-integral approach. We apply our novel approaches to spontaneous and stimulated emission for atoms and molecules in optical cavities.<br/>However, considering the free photonic field being described by harmonic Hamiltonians, the coupling to the matter within dipole approximation and starting the Wigner dynamics with a Gaussian wavepacket, we find that the results are accurate but not exact, although observation suggests that classical Wigner dynamics for harmonic potentials up to a linear coupling should describe the motion exact. This implies that the true potential driving the photonic motion is in fact not harmonic. To further investigate this, we introduce the exact-factorization approach and therewith time-dependent potential energy-surfaces for electron-photon interaction.<br/>

Light-matter interactions in optical cavities beyond the classical Maxwell description

256th National Meeting (2018)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.