Probing ultrafast pi pi/n pi internal conversion in organic chromophores via K-edge resonant absorption

• Published in: Nature communications 2017, Vol.8
• Main Authors: Wolf, T. J. A., Myhre, R. H., Cryan, J. P., Coriani, S., Squibb, R. J., Battistoni, A., Berrah, N., Bostedt, C., Bucksbaum, P., Coslovich, G., Feifel, R., Gaffney, K. J., Grilj, J., Martinez, T. J., Miyabe, S., Moeller, S. P., Mucke, Melanie, Natan, A., Obaid, R., Osipov, T., Plekan, O., Wang, S., Koch, H., Gühr, M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00069-7

Many photoinduced processes including photosynthesis and human vision happen in organic molecules and involve coupled femtosecond dynamics of nuclei and electrons. Organic molecules with heteroatoms often possess an important excited-state relaxation channel from an optically allowed pi pi* to a dark n pi* state. The pi pi*/n pi* internal conversion is difficult to investigate, as most spectroscopic methods are not exclusively sensitive to changes in the excited-state electronic structure. Here, we report achieving the required sensitivity by exploiting the element and site specificity of near-edge soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy. As a hole forms in the n orbital during pi pi*/n pi* internal conversion, the absorption spectrum at the heteroatom K-edge exhibits an additional resonance. We demonstrate the concept using the nucleobase thymine at the oxygen K-edge, and unambiguously show that pi pi*/n pi* internal conversion takes place within (60 +/- 30) fs. High-level-coupled cluster calculations confirm the method's impressive electronic structure sensitivity for excited-state investigations.