Ab initio spectroscopy and photoinduced cooling of the trans-stilbene molecule

We present a theoretical study of the S(0)-->S(1) and S(0)<--S(1) vibronic spectra for trans-stilbene. Franck-Condon spectra in the harmonic approximation are generated for the complete system with 72 degrees of freedom by means of an analytic time-dependent approach accounting for Dushinsky rotations and thermal effects. The force fields are computed by means of density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT, on the one hand, and ab initio complete active space self-consistent field theory, on the other hand. The B3LYP functional shows that almost planar potential energy surface minima are found for the S(0) and S(1) state. Imposing C(2h) symmetry constraints, we obtain low-temperature high-resolution Franck-Condon spectra for both absorption and emission which are in reasonably good agreement with the experimental spectra measured by Syage et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 81, 4685 (1984)] in supersonic jets. Due to thermal population of low-energy modes, the room temperature absorption spectrum is very broad. An almost structureless band which extends over several thousand cm(-1) is obtained from the present theory and agrees with the experimental absorption band shape. Finally, within the harmonic model, we study the effect of photoexcitation on the energy distribution in the excited S(1) state. We find noticeable cooling of approximately 20 K within a frequency interval spanning from -400 to 200 cm(-1) around the 0-0 transition. This indicates that photoinduced cooling must be taken into account when considering the dynamics of the photoinduced isomerization of trans-stilbene. Moreover, this is not the final word, as anharmonicity of the low frequency modes must be taken into account to obtain a full picture which would explain both the energy dependence of the isomerization rates as well as the dependence on the pressure of an external buffer gas.