Förster energy transfer

Introduction
Lots of molecules can be brought in an electronic excited state by absorbing a photon. If the emission of that photon than occurs in a singlet state, we can describe it as fluorescence. Under certain circumstances the energy of an excited molecule can be transfered to another molecule without radiation, known as förster resonance energy transfer.

The förster resonance energy transfer happens between two molecules that we can define as aceptor (A) chromophore and donator (D) chromophore. Lets assume the following: an excited (*) D chromophore molecule in the first excited singlet state (S1,0) is in a distance (r) of an A molecule (S0,0) that is in an electronic ground state. Both can not move from their position, they are embedded in a fixed matrix. The energy between the two molecular systems (D → A) is being transfered in an nonradiation process through dipole-dipole coupling:

D*(S1,0) + A(S0,0) → D(S0,0) + A*(1,0)

Depiction of the electronic excitement (kabs) of a donor molecule and its deactivations via fluorescence (kfl), inner transformation (kic) with following nonradiative deactivation (krl) and the energy transmission (kt) to an aceptor molecule.