  In recent years tremendous progress in the field of light-matter interactions
has unveiled that strong coupling to the modes of an optical cavity can alter
chemistry even at room temperature. Despite these impressive advances, many
fundamental questions of chemistry in cavities remain unanswered. This is also
due to a lack of exact results that can be used to validate and benchmark
approximate approaches. In this work we provide such reference calculations
from exact diagonalisation of the Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian in the
long-wavelength limit with an effective cavity mode. This allows us to
investigate the reliability of the ubiquitous Jaynes-Cummings model not only
for electronic but also for the case of ro-vibrational transitions. We
demonstrate how the commonly ignored thermal velocity of charged molecular
systems can influence chemical properties, while leaving the spectra invariant.
Furthermore, we show the emergence of new bound polaritonic states beyond the
dissociation energy limit.
