Singlet fission in lycopene H-aggregates

A theory of singlet fission (SF) in carotenoid dimers is applied to explain the SF in lycopene H-aggregates observed after high-energy photoexcitation. The explanation proposed here is that a high energy, delocalized bright 1Bu+ state first relaxes and localizes onto a single lycopene monomer. The high-energy intramonomer state then undergoes internal conversion to the 11Bu– state. Once populated, the 11Bu– state allows exothermic bimolecular singlet fission, while its internal conversion to the 21Ag– state is symmetry forbidden. The simulation of SF predicts that the intramonomer triplet-pair state undergoes almost complete population transfer to the intermonomer singlet-pair state within 100 ps. Simultaneously, ZFS interactions begin to partially populate the intermonomer quintet triplet-pair state up to ca. 2 ns, after which hyperfine interactions thermally equilibrate the triplet-pair states, thus forming free single triplets within 50 ns