Within a tight-binding electron-phonon interacting model, we investigate the dynamics of photoexcitations to address the generation mechanism of charged polarons in conjugated polymers by using a nonadiabatic evolution method. Besides the neutral polaron exciton which is well known, we identify a novel product of lattice dynamic relaxation from the photoexcited states in a few hundreds of femtoseconds, which is a mixed state composed of both charged polarons and neutral excitons. Our results show that the charged polarons are generated directly with a yield of about 25%, which is independent of the excitation energies, in good agreement with results from experiments. Effects of the conjugation length are also discussed.

• Received 8 June 2004

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.216407