Intraband relaxation and temperature dependence of the fluorescence decay time of one-dimensional Frenkel excitons: The Pauli master equation approach

In molecular J-aggregates one often observes an increase of the fluorescence decay time when increasing the temperature from 0 K. This phenomenon is usually attributed to the thermal population of the dark Frenkel exciton states that lie above the superradiant bottom state of the exciton band. In this paper, we study this effect for a homogeneous one-dimensional aggregate in a host medium and we model the scattering between different exciton states as arising from their coupling to the host vibrations. A Pauli master equation is used to describe the redistribution of excitons over the band. The rates entering this equation are calculated within the framework of first-order perturbation theory, assuming a linear on-site interaction between excitons and acoustic phonons. Solving the master equation numerically for aggregates of up to 100 molecules, we calculate the temperature dependence of the fluorescence kinetics in general and the decay time scale in particular. The proper definition of the fluorescence decay time is discussed in detail. We demonstrate that, even at a quantum yield of unity, the possibility to directly interpret fluorescence experiments in terms of a simple radiative time scale depends crucially on the initial excitation conditions in combination with the competition between spontaneous emission and intraband phonon-assisted relaxation. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.