Confinement-induced enhancement or suppression of the resonant dipole–dipole interaction

Abstract

By using the quantized Fresnel modes in the planar cavity, the resonant molecular interaction is theoretically described and the general interaction potential tensor is obtained. The resonant dipole-dipole (D–D) interaction or excitation transfer matrix element are found to be dramatically suppressed or enhanced by the surrounding planar boundaries. The analytic expressions of the resonant D–D interaction potential are obtained for a few limiting cases. The results thus obtained are closely related to various phenomena associated with the spatial confinement, such as confinement-induced phase transitions of liquids, resonant excitation transfer between molecules bound in membrane etc. In the case of the high-Q cavity, the reduction of the effective dimensionality is discussed. Secondly, the short-distance limit of the general resonant molecular interaction potential tensor and its frequency dependence are investigated. Numerical calculations of the high-Q cavity limit and the lipid-water system are presented to demonstrate the crucial role of the planar boundaries in the resonant D–D interaction. The relevances of the current investigation with the excitation transfer in the photosynthetic antenna system, coherent energy transfer between neighboring peptide bonds, and static D–D interaction in the molecular dynamics simulation study of the membrane-bound proteins are briefly discussed.