  The demonstration of strong and ultrastrong coupling regimes of cavity QED
with polyatomic molecules has opened new routes to control chemical dynamics at
the nanoscale. We show that strong resonant coupling of a cavity field with an
electronic transition can effectively decouple collective electronic and
nuclear degrees of freedom in a disordered molecular ensemble, even for
molecules with high-frequency quantum vibrational modes having strong
electron-vibration interactions. This type of polaron decoupling can be used to
control chemical reactions. We show that the rate of electron transfer
reactions in a cavity can be orders of magnitude larger than in free space, for
a wide class of organic molecular species.
