Exciton Seebeck effect in molecular systems

We investigate the exciton dynamics under temperature difference with the hierarchical equations of motion. Through a nonperturbative simulation of the transient absorption of a heterogeneous trimer model, we show that the temperature difference causes exciton population redistribution and affects the exciton transfer time. It is found that one can reproduce not only the exciton population redistribution but also the change of the exciton transfer time induced by the temperature difference with a proper tuning of the site energies of the aggregate. In this sense, there exists a site energy shift equivalence for any temperature difference in a broad range. This phenomenon is similar to the Seebeck effect as well as spin Seebeck effect and can be named as exciton Seebeck effect. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.