MOTIONAL SPIN RELAXATION IN PHOTOEXCITED TRIPLET STATES

D. Harryvan*, E. van Faassen

Debye Institute, Utrecht University, Princetonplein 1, 3584 CC, Utrecht, Germany,
* current address: Dept. of Physical Chemistry, Freiburg University, Germany


Transient EPR experiments were performed on photoexcited spin triplet states of the luminescent dye EOSIN-Y in diluted (order of 1 nMol) frozen propan-1-ol solutions at various temperatures. Photoexcitation was achieved by irradiation with intense, short laser pulses. The details of the spin relaxation, in particular the dependence on time, magnetic field and microwave field strength are all reproduced by a model which computes the total magnetization in a population of photoexcited triplet states undergoing random, reorientational motion. Using this model, we estimated the motional correlation times to be around a microsecond. This timescale is two orders of magnitude slower than the phase memory time of the triplets.