Research Interests

What types of molecular phenomena exhibit universalities that are robust against experimental perturbations?

In the last decades, condensed matter theory has witnessed a renaissance fueled by the introduction of a powerful set of concepts rooted in geometry and topology. In particular, the characterization of a broad class of solid state phenomena in terms of Berry phases has provided an elegant and unifying conceptual framework to understand certain physical properties of materials which are protected against imperfections or disorder.

Berry phases have a longstanding history in theoretical chemistry, routinely appearing in discussions of conical intersections between potential energy surfaces of molecules. However, unlike their solid state counterpart, little has been discussed about topologically protected molecular phenomena. In our group, we have pioneered the study of such effects for exciton and polariton energy transport in organic materials, as well as for the characterization of vibronic properties in Jahn-Teller molecules. This research is at its infancy and we hope to discover more topologically protected phenomena in molecular systems.

How do we understand the thermodynamics and kinetics of chemical processes inside of optical microcavities?

A great deal is already known about the basic physicochemical forces that drive photochemical processes in the condensed phase. However, recently there has been considerable interest in a new class of chemistry that occurs in strongly confined electromagnetic environments such as optical cavities or plasmonic arrays, where the quantum states of light mix strongly with excited vibrational or electronic states of molecules to produce hybridized quantum states known as polaritons.

While chemists may be unfamiliar with them as of today, molecular polaritons are straightforward to fabricate, have versatile materials properties, and exhibit nontrivial physicochemical effects at room temperature. Thus, molecular polaritons are here to stay and we anticipate they will constitute a new generation of quantum molecular materials with unique properties that can be harnessed for photonic, energy harvesting, storage, and catalysis architectures, amongst other scenarios. In our group, we develop theories and computational methods to understand reported experiments or design new scenarios of polariton chemistry.

How do we compute or measure observables resulting from complex molecular dynamics?

Photoinduced molecular processes are at the heart of modern light-harvesting and energy conversion architectures and technologies. Understanding these processes at the quantum mechanical amplitude level is not a trivial matter due to the complex interplay between nuclear and electronic dynamics. In our group, we are interested in novel computational strategies for the simulation of these nonadiabatic processes and on the development of nonlinear spectroscopies which optimally collect the desired quantum information. For these purposes, we are also interested in the creative use of novel optical probes such as quantum light, optical cavities, and nanophotonic resources.