Towards all-optical spin manipulation in single molecules: a refined region for locating a dark resonance

TL;DR

This paper measures the triplet energy in single molecules using phosphorescence, advancing the potential for all-optical spin control and quantum applications in molecular systems.

Contribution

It provides a refined measurement of triplet energy in single molecules, enabling targeted searches for spin-forbidden transitions for optical spin manipulation.

Findings

Enhanced phosphorescence in host matrix facilitates triplet exciton generation

Triplet energy measurement narrows down search for spin-forbidden transitions

Supports development of all-optical molecular spin control methods

Abstract

The on-demand manipulation of triplet states in closed-shell single molecules is still out of reach due to a lack of information about the energy of those triplet states. Yet, the access to triplet states would open up a route towards an all-optical single-molecule photonic switch/transistor and, moreover, would provide a way of performing coherent spin operations from the spin-less ground state. In this work, we take an important step towards those aims by measuring the triplet energy from the weak phosphorescence signal of perdeuterated perylene, embedded as a guest molecule in a dibenzothiophene host matrix, which well preserves the coherence properties of the perylene guest. We find that perylene's phosphorescence can be enhanced in this host matrix, when acting as an intermediary for the generation of triplet excitons. The triplet energy that we find can be used to significantly narrow down the search for the ultra-weak spin-forbidden transitions from the ground singlet to the triplet states of a single molecule.