Theory and Control of Thermal Photoinduced Electron Transfer Reactions in Polyatomic Molecules

A Gaussian Wave Packet Propagation Approach to Vibrationally Resolved Optical Spectra at Non-Zero Temperatures

An effective time dependent approach based on a method that is similar to the Gaussian wave packet propagation (GWP) technique of Heller is developed for the computation of vibrationally resolved electronic spectra at finite temperatures in the harmonic, Franck-Condon/Hertzberg-Teller approximations. Since the vibrational thermal density matrix of the ground electronic surface and the time evolution operator on that surface commute, it is possible to write the spectrum generating correlation function as a trace of the time evolved doorway state. In the stated approximations, the doorway state is a superposition of the harmonic oscillator zero and one quantum eigenfunctions and thus can be propagated by the GWP. The algorithm has an O(N(3)) dependence on the number of vibrational modes. An application to pyrene absorption spectrum at two temperatures is presented as a proof of the concept.

Chemical degradation of proteins in the solid state with a focus on photochemical reactions

Protein pharmaceuticals comprise an increasing fraction of marketed products but the limited solution stability of proteins requires considerable research effort to prepare stable formulations. An alternative is solid formulation, as proteins in the solid state are thermodynamically less susceptible to degradation. Nevertheless, within the time of storage a large panel of kinetically controlled degradation reactions can occur such as, e.g., hydrolysis reactions, the formation of diketopiperazine, condensation and aggregation reactions. These mechanisms of degradation in protein solids are relatively well covered by the literature. Considerably less is known about oxidative and photochemical reactions of solid proteins. This review will provide an overview over photolytic and non-photolytic degradation reactions, and specially emphasize mechanistic details on how solid structure may affect the interaction of protein solids with light.

Excited state radiationless decay process with Duschinsky rotation effect: Formalism and implementation

Duschinsky rotation effect is a simple and effective way to characterize the difference between the ground state and excited state potential energy surfaces. For complex molecules, harmonic oscillator model is still the practical way to describe the dynamics of excited states. Based on the first-order perturbation theory a la Fermi golden rule, the authors have applied the path integral of Gaussian type for the correlation function to derive an analytic formalism to calculate the internal conversion rate process with Duschinsky rotation effect being taken into account. The validity of their formalism is verified through comparison with previous work, both analytically for the case of neglecting Duschinsky rotation and numerically for the ethylene molecules with two-mode mixing. Their expression is derived for multimode mixing.