Photoemission orbital tomography for excitons in organic molecules

Abstract

Driven by recent developments in time-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we extend the successful method of photoemission orbital tomography (POT) to excitons. Our theory retains the intuitive orbital picture of POT, while respecting both the entangled character of the exciton wave function and the energy conservation in the photoemission process. Analyzing results from three organic molecules, we classify generic exciton structures and give a simple interpretation in terms of natural transition orbitals. We validate our findings by directly simulating pump-probe experiments with time-dependent density functional theory.