Modifying van der Waals Materials via Cavity Vacuum Fluctuations
Researchers used a periodic formulation of a photon many-body dispersion functional within quantum electrodynamical density-functional theory to study how cavity vacuum fluctuations modify van der Waals materials. Applying this method to bilayer hBN and graphene showed that increasing light-matter coupling weakens interlayer attraction, leading to increased equilibrium distances and softened vibrational modes. This suggests cavity vacuum fluctuations can tune the structural properties of these materials.