title: Förster Energy Transfer and Davydov Splittings in Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory: Lessons from 2-Pyridone Dimer.
abstract: The Davydov or exciton splitting of vertical excitation energies is commonly used to estimate the excitation energy transfer rate between chromophores. Here we investigate the S1-S2 Davydov splitting in 2-pyridone dimer as a function of the monomer separation, R. We assess the ability of various functionals to reproduce the Davydov splitting at finite R predicted by the approximate coupled cluster singles doubles method CC2. While semilocal functionals fail qualitatively because of spurious charge-transfer intruder states, global hybrids with a large fraction of exact exchange, such as BHandH-LYP, reproduce the CC2 splittings within few wavenumbers. We analyze our results by comparison to lowest-order intermolecular perturbation theory in the spirit of Förster and Dexter. At equilibrium hydrogen bond distance, the Förster-Dexter splittings are too small by up to a factor of 2.
authors.affiliation: University of California, Irvine, Department of Chemistry, 1102 Natural Sciences II, Irvine, California 92697-2025, and University of Mainz, Institute of Physical Chemistry, D-55099 Mainz, Germany.
authors.forename: Espen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Sagvolden
authors.affiliation: University of California, Irvine, Department of Chemistry, 1102 Natural Sciences II, Irvine, California 92697-2025, and University of Mainz, Institute of Physical Chemistry, D-55099 Mainz, Germany.
authors.forename: Filipp
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Furche
authors.affiliation: University of California, Irvine, Department of Chemistry, 1102 Natural Sciences II, Irvine, California 92697-2025, and University of Mainz, Institute of Physical Chemistry, D-55099 Mainz, Germany.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Köhn