We have studied the intense chirped pulse excitation of a molecule coupled with a dissipative environment taking into account electronic coherence effects. We considered a two-state electronic system with relaxation treated as a diffusion on electronic potential energy surfaces. This relaxation model enables us to trace continuously the transition from a coherent population transfer to incoherent one. An inhomogeneously broadened system with frozen nuclear motion is invoked to model a purely coherent transfer. We show that the type of population transfer ~coherent or incoherent! strongly depends on the pulse chirp, its sign, and the detunings of the exciting pulse carrier frequency with respect to the frequency of the Franck-Condon transition. For positive chirped pulses and moderate detunings, relaxation does not hinder a coherent population transfer. Moreover, under these conditions the relaxation favors more efficient population transfer with respect to the ''coherent'' system with frozen nuclear motion. © 2002 American Institute of Physics. @DOI: 10.1063/1.1505869#

Purely organic materials with negative and near-zero dielectric permittivity can be easily fabricated, and the propagation of surface polaritons at the material/air interface was demonstrated. Here, we develop a theory of nonlinear light-induced “plasmonic” properties of organic materials. We predict the generation of switching waves or kinks in the bistable organic thin films that enable us to observe a bistable behaviour of the surface polaritons at the organic thin film/dielectric interface under laser irradiation. We present the alternating-sign dependence of the switching wave velocity on pump intensity and discuss a possibility of controlling the polariton propagation by switching waves.

We consider exciton effects on current in molecular nanojunctions, using a model comprising a two two-level sites bridge connecting free-electron reservoirs. Expanding the density operator in the many-electron eigenstates of the uncoupled sites, we obtain a $16\times 16$ density matrix in the bridge subspace whose dynamics is governed by Liouville equation that takes into account interactions on the bridge as well as electron injection and damping to and from the leads. Our consideration can be considerably simplified by using the pseudospin description based on the symmetry properties of Lie group SU(2). We study the influence of the bias voltage, the Coulomb repulsion, and the energy-transfer interactions on the steady-state current and, in particular, focus on the effect of the excitonic interaction between bridge sites. Our calculations show that in case of noninteracting electrons this interaction leads to reduction in the current at high voltage for a homodimer bridge. In other words, we predict the effect of “exciton” blocking. The effect of exciton blocking is modified for a heterodimer bridge and disappears for strong Coulomb repulsion at sites. In the latter case the exciton type interactions can open new channels for electronic conduction. In particular, in the case of strong Coulomb repulsion, conduction exists even when the electronic connectivity does not exist. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.81.165310 © 2010 The American Physical Society

Nanoscale optical labeling is an advanced bioimaging tool. It is mostly based on fluorescence (FL) phenomena and enables the visualization of single biocells, bacteria, viruses, and biological tissues, providing monitoring of functional biosystems in vitro and in vivo, and the imaging-guided transportation of drug molecules. There is a variety of FL biolabels such as organic molecular dyes, genetically encoded fluorescent proteins (green fluorescent protein and homologs), semiconductor quantum dots, carbon dots, plasmonic metal gold-based nanostructures and more. In this review, a new generation of FL biolabels based on the recently found biophotonic effects of visible FL are described. This intrinsic FL phenomenon is observed in any peptide/protein materials folded into β-sheet secondary structures, irrespective of their composition, complexity, and origin. The FL effect has been observed both in natural amyloid fibrils, associated with neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and more), and diverse synthetic peptide/protein structures subjected to thermally induced biological refolding helix-like→β-sheet. This approach allowed us to develop a new generation of FL peptide/protein bionanodots radiating multicolor, tunable, visible FL, covering the entire visible spectrum in the range of 400–700 nm. Newly developed biocompatible nanoscale biomarkers are considered as a promising tool for emerging precise biomedicine and advanced medical nanotechnologies (high-resolution bioimaging, light diagnostics, therapy, optogenetics, and health monitoring).