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Type: 
Journal
Description: 
The photoinduced relaxation dynamics of pyrimidine nucleobases (uracil, thymine, and cytosine) was studied using the surface-hopping approach at the semiempirical OM2/MRCI level of theory. The relevant potential energy surfaces were characterized by performing geometry optimizations of the energy minima of the lowest electronic states and of the most important conical intersections and by computing excitation energies at each configuration. Surface-hopping molecular dynamics simulations were performed to describe the nonadiabatic dynamics after excitation into the optically active state. In each of the molecules, the two lowest excited singlet states are involved in the dynamics, and there are competing relaxation paths. The dynamics is dominated by a two-step relaxation mechanism in uracil and thymine, while the direct decay to the ground state is most important in cytosine. For all three molecules, the …
Publisher: 
American Chemical Society
Publication date: 
19 Mar 2009
Authors: 

Zhenggang Lan, Eduardo Fabiano, Walter Thiel

Biblio References: 
Volume: 113 Issue: 11 Pages: 3548-3555
Origin: 
The Journal of Physical Chemistry B