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 ¹B⁺ state first relaxes and localizes onto a single lycopene monomer. The high-energy intramonomer state then undergoes internal conversion to the 1¹B^- state. Once populated, the 1¹B^- state allows exothermic bimolecular singlet fission, while its internal conversion to the 2¹A^- 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.