Characterisation of Chlorophyll a and Chlorophyll b Monomers in Various Solvent Environments with Ultrafast Spectroscopy

In photosynthesis the energy from the sun is captured by light harvesting chlorophyll pigments and converted to stable chemical energy, by the photochemical reaction center. Photosynthetic energy transfer in the antenna systems of green plants has previously been studied by ultrafast time resolved spectroscopy. The characteristics of the chlorophyll pigments itself is important to study in order to understand the dynamics on a femtosecond timescale. One way to study the energy transfer is to use transient absorption spectroscopy and follow the increase or decrease in the transient absorption signal with time (1). Another way to study the energy transfer is to monitor the change in dichroism…