A hole burning study of excitonic states of chain molecules in glasses

Abstract
Thermal broadening of spectral holes burnt into excitonic states of long chain molecular aggregates of pseudoisocyanine iodide is investigated over a temperature range from 350 mK to 80 K. The results differ very much from the usual behavior of small molecules in glasses. We found that extended states are almost completely decoupled from the amorphous host lattice and spectral diffusion effects play a minor role. The homogeneous linewidth is independent of temperature below 10 K. Above, thermal broadening occurs in two steps: there is a weak onset around 15 K and a strong onset around 65 K. The data can be fitted by a superposition of two exponentials.