Identification of the Decay Pathway of Photoexcited Nucleobases

Xiangxu Mu; Ming Zhang; Jiechao Feng; Hanwei Yang; Nikita Medvedev; Xinyang，Liu; Leyi Yang; Zhenxiang Wu; Haitan Xu and Zheng Li

doi:10.34133/ultrafastscience.0015

Volume 3 Issue 2

Mar. 2023

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Xiangxu Mu, Ming Zhang, Jiechao Feng, Hanwei Yang, Nikita Medvedev, Xinyang，Liu, Leyi Yang, Zhenxiang Wu, Haitan Xu and Zheng Li. 2023: Identification of the Decay Pathway of Photoexcited Nucleobases. Ultrafast Science, 2023(2). doi: 10.34133/ultrafastscience.0015

Citation:

Xiangxu Mu, Ming Zhang, Jiechao Feng, Hanwei Yang, Nikita Medvedev, Xinyang，Liu, Leyi Yang, Zhenxiang Wu, Haitan Xu and Zheng Li. 2023: Identification of the Decay Pathway of Photoexcited Nucleobases. Ultrafast Science, 2023(2). doi: 10.34133/ultrafastscience.0015

Citation:

Xiangxu Mu, Ming Zhang, Jiechao Feng, Hanwei Yang, Nikita Medvedev, Xinyang，Liu, Leyi Yang, Zhenxiang Wu, Haitan Xu and Zheng Li. 2023: Identification of the Decay Pathway of Photoexcited Nucleobases. Ultrafast Science, 2023(2). doi: 10.34133/ultrafastscience.0015

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Identification of the Decay Pathway of Photoexcited Nucleobases

doi: 10.34133/ultrafastscience.0015

a State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics and Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
b Institute of Physics Czech Academy of Science, Na Slovance 2, 182 21 Prague 8, Czech Republic.
c School of Materials Science and Intelligent Engineering, Nanjing University, Suzhou 215163, China.
d Shenzhen Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China.
e School of Physical Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.
f Collaborative Innovation Center of Extreme Optics, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, Shanxi 030006, China.
g Peking University Yangtze Delta Institute of Optoelectronics, Nantong, Jiangsu 226010, China.

Funds:

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 12174009, 11974031, 12104082, 12234002, and 92250303] and Beijing Natural Science Foundation [grant number Z220008]. N.M. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports [grant numbers LTT17015, LM2018114, and EF16_013/0001552].

Received Date: 2022-09-13
Rev Recd Date: 2022-12-23
Publish Date: 2023-03-08

Abstract

Abstract

The identification of the decay pathway of the nucleobase uracil after being photoexcited by ultraviolet light has been a long-standing problem. Various theoretical models have been proposed but yet to be verified. Here, we propose an experimental scheme to test the theoretical models of gas phase uracil decay mechanism by a combination of ultrafast x-ray spectroscopy, x-ray diffraction,and electron diffraction methods. Incorporating the signatures of multiple probing methods, we demonstrate an approach that can identify the dominant mechanism of the geometric and electronic relaxation of the photoexcited uracil molecule among several candidate models.