0000000000459814
AUTHOR
Peter Martinsson
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…
Dynamics of ground and excited state chlorophylla molecules in pyridine solution probed by femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopy
Abstract Femtosecond pump–probe spectroscopy was used to investigate the ground and excited state dynamics of chlorophyll a (Chl a ) in pyridine following excitation by a 100 fs optical pulse. The transient absorption spectrum and kinetics reveal spectral evolution on two ultrafast time scales: ∼100 fs and ∼3 ps. We attribute these dynamics to ground-state transient hole-burning and solvation dynamics. Transient absorption anisotropy at early times (∼500 fs) was measured for Chl a in pyridine and shows a pronounced wavelength dependence, where anisotropy varies between 0 and 0.5. Strong contribution from excited state absorption is the origin of the variation.