SOLVENT REORGANIZATION IN LONG-RANGE ELECTRON-TRANSFER - DENSITY-MATRIX APPROACH

The dynamics of charge transfer from a photoexcited donor to an accept or coupled through a bridge is investigated by using a correlation-fun ction approach in Liouville space that takes into account solvent dyna mics with an arbitrary distribution of time scales. The time- and freq uency-resolved fluorescence spectrum from the acceptor is used to prob e the scaling of the ET rate with bridge size. The crossover between t he coherent tunneling (transfer) and the incoherent sequential (transp ort) regimes and its implications on the nature of ET processes in DNA are discussed.