Competition between collective and individual conical intersection dynamics in an optical cavity

Light-induced nonadiabatic phenomena arise when molecules or molecular ensembles are exposed to resonant external electromagnetic fields. The latter can either be classical laser or quantized cavity radiation fields, which can couple to either the electronic, nuclear or rotational degrees of freedom of the molecule. In the case of quantized radiation fields, the light–matter coupling results in the formation of two new hybrid light–matter states, namely the upper and lower ‘polaritons’. Light-induced avoided crossings and light-induced conical intersections (CIs) between polaritons exist as a function of the vibrational and rotational coordinates of single molecules. For ensembles of N molecules, the N − 1 dark states between the two optically active polaritons feature, additionally, so-called collective CIs, involving the coordinates of more than one molecule to form. Here, we study the competition between intramolecular and collective light-induced nonadiabatic phenomena by comparing the escape rate from the Franck–Condon region of a single molecule and of a molecular ensemble coupled to a cavity mode. In situations where the polaritonic gap would be large and the dark-state decay channels could not be reached effectively, the presence of a seam of light-induced CI between the polaritons facilitates again the participation of the dark manifold, resulting in a cooperative effect that determines the overall non-radiative decay rate from the upper into the lower polaritonic states.