Understanding the polaritonic ground state in cavity quantum electrodynamics

Molecular polaritons arise when molecules interact so strongly with light that they become entangled with each other. This light-matter hybridization alters the chemical and physical properties of the molecular system and allows chemical reactions to be controlled without the use of external fields. We investigate the impact of strong light-matter coupling on the electronic structure using perturbative approaches and demonstrate that Rayleigh-Schr\"odinger perturbation theory can reproduce the ground state energies in optical cavities to comparable accuracy as ab initio cavity quantum electrodynamics methodologies for currently relevant coupling strengths. The method is effective in both low and high cavity frequency regimes and straightforward to implement via response functions. Furthermore, we establish simple relations between cavity-induced intermolecular forces and van der Waals forces. These findings provide valuable insight into the manipulation of ground-state polaritonic energy landscapes, shedding light on the systems and conditions in which modifications can be achieved.