This work addresses the question of whether low-lying excitations in conjugated polymers are comprised of free charge carriers or excitons. States are characterized as bound or unbound according to the scaling of the average particle-hole separation with system size. We critically examine other criteria commonly used to characterize states. The polymer is described by an extended Hubbard model with alternating transfer integrals. The model is solved by exact diagonalization and the density-matrix renormalization-group (DMRG) method. We demonstrate that the DMRG accurately determines excitation energies, transition dipole moments and particle-hole separations of a number of dipole-forbidden
(Ag) and dipole-allowed
(Bu) states. Within a parameter regime considered reasonable for polymers such as polyacetylene, it is found that the charge gap, often used to define the exciton binding energy, is not a good criterion by which to decide whether a state is bound or unbound. The essential nonlinear optical state
mAg is found to mark the onset of unbound excitations in the
Ag symmetry sector. In the
Bu symmetry sector, on the other hand, it is found that all low-lying states are unbound and that there is no well-defined
nBu state. That is, the
1Bu state marks the onset of unbound excitations in this sector.
We report accurate numerical studies of excited state orderings in long hypothetical $\ensuremath{\pi}$-conjugated oligomers in which the hydrogen atoms of transpolyacetylene are replaced with conjugated side groups, within modified Hubbard models. There exists a range of the bare Coulomb repulsion for which the excited state ordering is conducive to photoluminescence in the substituted systems, even as this ordering is opposite in the unsubstituted polyenes of the same lengths. Our work provides motivation to study real $\ensuremath{\pi}$-conjugated polymers with transverse conjugation and small optical gaps.
The Pariser-Parr-Pople model of pi-conjugated electrons is solved by a three-block, symmetry-adapted density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method for the light emitting polymer, poly(para-phenylene vinylene). The energies of the primary excited states are calculated. There is excellent agreement between theory and experiment when solid state screening is incorporated into the model parameters, enabling us to make an identification of the origin of the key spectroscopic features. Appendices describe important technical aspects of the three-block DMRG approach: Local Hilbert space efficiency and its relation to the matrix product formulation of the DMRG; an efficient computational procedure for constructing symmetry-adapted states for DMRG calculations; and correct superblock state targeting to ensure good convergence of the method.