A molecular optical bond is a hybridization of several spatially separated molecules produced not by overlapping electron clouds or near-field dipole-dipole interaction but by their far-field coupling to a shared mode of an optical microcavity. In the strong-coupling regime this cavity-mediated interaction collectively enhances the vacuum Rabi splitting and generates super-radiant and sub-radiant collective states in both resonant and dispersive regimes, and a two-photon transition appears between the ground and excited states of the resulting optical compound. The behaviour is captured quantitatively by the Tavis-Cummings Hamiltonian, establishing a route to engineered hybrid light-matter materials.
This paper introduces and experimentally demonstrates the concept of a 'molecular optical bond': several spatially separated molecules are hybridized through the far-field electromagnetic coupling pr…