Group-theoretic treatment of strong light-matter coupling with an arbitrary number of excitations

Abstract: Strong light-matter interactions in optical microcavities give rise to hybrid light-matter states known as polaritons. While actively used in modern technologies, theoretical descriptions of such systems are often restricted to the single-excitation case, limiting their ability to capture many-excitation physics and hindering further technological advancements. Here, by exploiting the combinatorial structure of quantum emitters, we investigate the Tavis-Cummings model with arbitrary number of excitations. We derive the structure and properties of its eigensystem and identify allowed radiative transitions in systems of realistic size scales. Our work reveals new behavior inaccessible to the few-excitation regime, while also providing a framework to reduce the computational complexity of similar systems with exponentially growing Hilbert spaces.