Eur. Phys. J. D 51, 109-116 (2009)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2008-00085-3

UV photoinduced dynamics in protonated aromatic amino acid

¹ Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers, UMR CNRS 7538, Institut Galilée, Université Paris 13, 93430 Villetaneuse, France
² Laboratoire des Collisions Atomiques et Moléculaires, UMR CNRS C8625, Bât. 351, Université Paris-Sud, F-91405 Orsay, France
³ Laboratoire de Photophysique Moléculaire, UPR CNRS 3361, Bât. 210, Université Paris-Sud, F-91405 Orsay, France

Corresponding author: ^a christophe.jouvet@u-psud.fr

Received: 16 January 2008
Published online: 7 May 2008

Abstract

UV photoinduced fragmentation of protonated aromatic amino acids has emerged the last few years, coming from a situation where nothing was known to what we think a good understanding of the optical properties. We will mainly focus this review on the tryptophan case. Three groups have mostly done spectroscopic studies and one has mainly been involved in dynamics studies of the excited states in the femtosecond/picosecond range and also in the fragmentation kinetics from nanosecond to millisecond. All these data, along with high level ab initio calculations, have shed light on the role of the different electronic states of the protonated molecules upon the fragmentation mechanisms.