A novel approach to probe the presence of correlation in energetic disorder: A theoretical study

Fluorescence spectra are used to study exciton spectral dynamics, resulting from hopping of excitons over localized states in one-dimensional systems of chromophores with correlated disorder. The complexity of exciton relaxation which is a direct consequence of the interplay of localization, intra-band or intra-segment relaxation and radiative relaxation of excitons is theoretically studied using a master equation. We show that in the case of resonant excitation the exciton spectral dynamics strongly depends on the presence of intermolecular correlation in the static disorder. We predict that the fluorescence with narrow band excitation could be used as an alternative tool to reveal the presence of the intermolecular correlation. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.