Nonlinearity and trapping in excitation transfer: Dimers and Trimers.

We study the interplay between nonlinearity in exciton transport and trapping due to a sink site for the dimer and the trimer with chain configuration by a numerical integration of the discrete nonlinear Schroedinger equation. Our results for the dimer show, that the formation of a self trapped state due to the nonlinear coupling increases the life time of the exciton substantially. Self trapping can be enhanced by the sink for short times, but for long times it disappears. In the trimer consisting of a subdimer extended by a sink site exists a transition between states localized on the two sites of the subdimer before for larger nonlinear coupling self trapping on one site of the subdimer is observed. For large trapping rates the fear of death effect leads to an increasing life time of the excitation on both, the dimer and the trimer. The sink site is then effectively decoupled. We explain this effect using an asymptotic theory for strong trapping and demonstrate it by direct numerical computation.