Halide double perovskites
with alternating silver and pnictogen
cations are an emerging family of photoabsorber materials with robust
stability and band gaps in the visible range. However, the nature
of optical excitations in these systems is not yet well understood,
limiting their utility. Here, we use
ab initio
many-body
perturbation theory within the
GW
approximation and
the Bethe–Salpeter equation approach to calculate the electronic
structure and optical excitations of the double perovskite series
Cs
2
AgBX
6
, with B = Bi
3+
, Sb
3+
and X = Br
–
, Cl
–
. We find that
these materials exhibit strongly localized resonant excitons with
energies from 170 to 434 meV below the direct band gap. In contrast
to lead-based perovskites, the Cs
2
AgBX
6
excitons
are computed to be non-hydrogenic with anisotropic effective masses
and sensitive to local field effects, a consequence of their chemical
heterogeneity. Our calculations demonstrate the limitations of the
Wannier–Mott and Elliott models for this class of double perovskites
and contribute to a detailed atomistic understanding of their light–matter
interactions.