One of the most exciting things about vibrational polaritons is that they can be used to modify chemical reactions. We’re not sure about the details of how this happens, so that’s a major area of focus for the field. This article on quantum control goes into a bit more detail.
I’m interested in the physics of vibrational polaritons and how they facilitate modified chemical reactivity. Ultrafast laser spectroscopy is the tool for this job. It allows me to study how the molecule-light interaction changes over extremely short time scales (picoseconds). There is still a lot to uncover about these curious quasi-particles. We don’t have a full picture of how vibrational polaritons relax from excited states, for example. The role of polariton coherence, population transfer, and interactions with the reservoir excitations (uncoupled molecules) also need to be studied further to understand how all of these factors might play into modified reactivity.