Modifying Chemical Landscapes by Coupling to Vacuum Fields

Electromagnetic vacuum fields are omnipresent in our universe, inducing many events such as spontaneous emission, Lamb shift, and Van der Waals forces. As demonstrated here, a chemical reaction can be influenced by strongly coupling the energy landscape governing the reaction pathway to vacuum fields in an optical cavity (see picture; MC=merocyanine). Detailed facts of importance to specialist readers are published as ”Supporting Information”. Such documents are peer-reviewed, but not copy-edited or typeset. They are made available as submitted by the authors. Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.