Abstract
Time-resolved photoelectron imaging can offer information about relative electronic state energies as well as details about molecular orbitals. Here, I describe how we have used this to probe the ultrafast dynamics of a bio-chromophore of the photoactive yellow protein (PYP). We show that both nuclear and electronic changes can be tracked in real-time as the molecule isomerises following photo-absorption, which is often referred to as the “primary” photoactive proteins. We also resolve the step before this primary step in which the nuclear framework rapidly adjusts to the change in electronic character. Finally, we show how non-valence states can play a critical role in the excited state dynamics of PYP chromophores and molecular anions more generally.
Biography
Jan Verlet received his Ph.D. from King’s College London in 2003 and moved to the University of California at Berkeley for a post-doc with Dan Neumark. He returned to the UK in 2006 as an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow and Lecturer at the Department of Chemistry in Durham University. He became professor in 2016 and was awarded a European Research Council Starting grant (2011) and the Royal Society of Chemistry Corday-Morgan Prize (2021).
Seminar Series by the NYU-ECNU Center for Computational Chemistry at NYU Shanghai