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First principles dynamics of photoexcited DNA and RNA bases

  • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

The reaction dynamics of excited electronic states in nucleic acid bases is a key process in DNA photodamage. Recent ultrafast spectroscopy experiments have shown multi-component decays of excited uracil and thymine, tentatively assigned to nonadiabatic transitions involving multiple electronic states. Using both quantum chemistry and first principles quantum molecular dynamics methods we show that a true minimum on the bright S2 electronic state is responsible for the first step which occurs on a femtosecond timescale. Thus the observed femtosecond decay does not correspond to surface crossing as previously thought. We suggest that subsequent barrier crossing to the minimal energy S2/S1 conical intersection is responsible for the picosecond decay.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationComputation in Modern Science and Engineering - Proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Methods in Science and Engineering 2007 (ICCMSE 2007)
Pages219-222
Number of pages4
Edition2
DOIs
StatePublished - 2007
EventInternational Conference on Computational Methods in Science and Engineering 2007, ICCMSE 2007 - Corfu, Greece
Duration: Sep 25 2007Sep 30 2007

Publication series

NameAIP Conference Proceedings
Number2
Volume963
ISSN (Print)0094-243X
ISSN (Electronic)1551-7616

Conference

ConferenceInternational Conference on Computational Methods in Science and Engineering 2007, ICCMSE 2007
Country/TerritoryGreece
CityCorfu
Period09/25/0709/30/07

Keywords

  • Ab initio molecular dynamics
  • DNA
  • Femtosecond
  • Internal conversion
  • Time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy

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