Archive 2016

Here you can find past events of the MPSD institute and the MPSD research groups at the Universität Hamburg.

Speaker: Samuel Leutwyler

Samuel Leutwyler - Cytosines: Excited-State Lifetimes, Nonradiative Decay Mechanism and Water Clusters

CFEL Molecular Physics Seminar
Photophysical investigations of the canonical nucleobases that make up DNA and RNA show that in room-temperature solvents, their excited states decay with (sub)picosecond lifetimes (τ = 0.3–2 ps). The apparent generality of ultrafast excited-state deactivation in the canonical nucleobases has led to the hypothesis that nucleobases are molecular survivors of the harsh UV environment on the early Earth before the emergence of life. [more]
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