Correspondence between light-absorption spectrum and nonequilibrium work distribution as a mean to access free energy...

The problem of recovering the free energy difference between two electronic states has been investigated by Frezzato [Chem. Phys. Lett. 533, 106 (2012)], exploring the equivalence between light-absorption spectra and work distribution, hence opening to the application of a spectroscopic version of the Jarzynski equality (JE) [Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 2690 (1997)]. Here, assuming the validity of the time-dependent perturbation theory, we demonstrate that such equivalence does not lead to the known form of the JE. This is ascribed to the fact that light-absorption processes cannot be described as stochastic processes. To emphasize such an aspect, we devise a stochastic model for the UV-vis (ultraviolet and visible) absorption, suitable for determining the free energy difference between two generic quantum manifolds in a JE-like fashion. However, the model would require explicit knowledge of the transition dipole moments, which are in general not available. Nonetheless, we derive a spectroscopic version of the JE that allows us to recover the free energy difference between the ground and an excited electronic state when the latter state is the only one observed in the spectrum.