Modifying van der Waals Materials via Cavity Vacuum Fluctuations
Abstract
In the field of cavity quantum materials, vacuum fluctuations of optical cavities are used for modifying ground-state properties of quantum materials without external driving. Here, one example is the van der Waals (vdW)/dispersion interaction in layered 2D vdW materials, where non-additive long-range correlations can dominate the interlayer binding. While cavity-induced changes of such interactions have been predicted and described using ab initio methods for molecular systems, no efficient description exists yet for extended materials. In this Letter, we close this gap by introducing a periodic formulation of the photon many-body dispersion (pMBD) functional within quantum electrodynamical density-functional theory (QEDFT). Applying this method with efficient q-point sampling to bilayer hBN and graphene, we predict cavity-modified stacking, increased equilibrium interlayer distances, and softened layer breathing modes with increasing light-matter coupling strength. Our results establish cavity vacuum fluctuations as a tuning knob for the structural properties of vdW materials.
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BibTeX
@misc{hassan2026modifying,
title = {{Modifying van der Waals Materials via Cavity Vacuum Fluctuations}},
author = {Mohammad Hassan and Cankut Tasci and Leon Orlov-Sullivan and Leonardo A. Cunha and Johannes Flick},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.28521},
eprint = {2608.28521},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28521},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Modifying van der Waals Materials via Cavity Vacuum Fluctuations
AU - Mohammad Hassan
AU - Cankut Tasci
AU - Leon Orlov-Sullivan
AU - Leonardo A. Cunha
AU - Johannes Flick
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/05
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.28521
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28521
AB - In the field of cavity quantum materials, vacuum fluctuations of optical cavities are used for modifying ground-state properties of quantum materials without external driving. Here, one example is the van der Waals (vdW)/dispersion interaction in layered 2D vdW materials, where non-additive long-range correlations can dominate the interlayer binding. While cavity-induced changes of such interactions have been predicted and described using ab initio methods for molecular systems, no efficient description exists yet for extended materials. In this Letter, we close this gap by introducing a periodic formulation of the photon many-body dispersion (pMBD) functional within quantum electrodynamical density-functional theory (QEDFT). Applying this method with efficient q-point sampling to bilayer hBN and graphene, we predict cavity-modified stacking, increased equilibrium interlayer distances, and softened layer breathing modes with increasing light-matter coupling strength. Our results establish cavity vacuum fluctuations as a tuning knob for the structural properties of vdW materials.
ER -