Stark spectroscopy of excited-state transitions in a conjugated polymer

Stark spectroscopy, which is well established for probing transitions between the ground and excited states of many material classes, is extended to transitions between transient excited states. To this end, it is combined with femtosecond pump-probe spectroscopy on a conjugated polymer with appropriately introduced traps which harvest excitation energy and build up a sufficient excited state population. The results indicate a significant difference in the effective dipole moments between two short lived excited states.