cfaed Seminar Series
cfaed Seminar Series
Dr. Alexander Eisfeld , Max-Planck-Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems
Energy transfer and optical properties of light harvesting aggregates
30.06.2016 (Thursday) Seminar Room 115 (HAL) , Hallwachsstr. 3 , 01162 Dresden
Assemblies of weakly interacting molecules (so-called molecular
aggregates) have become remarkably versatile quantum systems with
applications in photography, opto-electronics, solar cells, and photobiology.
The remarkable properties of these aggregates stem from the
strong transition dipole-dipole interaction between the individual
molecules which leads to eigenstates with excitation shared coherently
by a large number of molecules. As a consequence, electronic excitation
can migrate through the aggregate and new superradiant optical
properties emerge.
In this talk I will give an introduction on the relationship between the
structure of the aggregate (spatial arrangement, molecular properties,
environment) and the resulting optical and transfer properties with a
focus on the the important role of coupling to vibrational modes. As
examples I will discuss superradiant emission of molecules on dielectric
surfaces and energy transfer in biological light harvesting systems.
A. Eisfeld received his PhD (physics) in 2006 from the university of
Freiburg (group of J.S. Briggs). After postdoc positions in Freiburg,
MPIPKS Dresden and Harvard (DFG research fellowship) he is now group
leader at the MPIPKS (since 2012).
His main research interests are collective effects and quantum-transport
in atomic, molecular and nano-scale many-body systems. Examples are
photosynthetic light-harvesting systems, aggregates of organic dyes or
assemblies of ultra-cold Rydberg atoms. To handle these large and
complex systems often multi-scale approaches are used which combine
molecular dynamics simulations, quantum chemistry methods, nonadiabatic
quantum dynamics and open quantum system formalisms.
One particular research interest is solving non-Markovian open quantum
system dynamics using efficient stochastic Schrödinger equations.