title: Photochemistry of hydrogen-bonded aromatic pairs: Quantum dynamical calculations for the pyrrole-pyridine complex.
abstract: The photochemical dynamics of the pyrrole-pyridine hydrogen-bonded complex has been investigated with computational methods. In this system, a highly polar charge-transfer state of (1)pipi* character drives the proton transfer from pyrrole to pyridine, leading to a conical intersection of S(1) and S(0) energy surfaces. A two-sheeted potential-energy surface including 39 in-plane nuclear degrees of freedom has been constructed on the basis of ab initio multiconfiguration electronic-structure data. The non-Born-Oppenheimer nuclear dynamics has been treated with time-dependent quantum wave-packet methods, including the two or three most relevant nuclear degrees of freedom. The effect of the numerous weakly coupled vibrational modes has been taken into account with reduced-density-matrix methods (multilevel Redfield theory). The results provide insight into the mechanisms of excited-state deactivation of hydrogen-bonded aromatic systems via the electron-driven proton-transfer process. This process is believed to be of relevance for the ultrafast excited-state deactivation of DNA base pairs and may contribute to the photostability of the molecular encoding of the genetic information.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Technical University of Munich, D-85747 Garching, Germany. lan@ch.tum.de
authors.forename: Zhenggang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Lan
authors.forename: Luis Manuel
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Frutos
authors.forename: Andrzej L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Sobolewski
authors.forename: Wolfgang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Domcke
mesh_terms: D004583:Electrons; D006860:Hydrogen Bonding; D010777:Photochemistry; D011725:Pyridines / Q000737:chemistry*; D011758:Pyrroles / Q000737:chemistry*; D011789:Quantum Theory; D013816:Thermodynamics
chemical_list: D011725:Pyridines; D011758:Pyrroles; C023666:pyridine