Theoretical Study of Ultrafast Electron Dynamics in Amino Acids

Prompt ioiuzatiou of large biological molecules may mince ultra fast charge migration along the molecular skeleton, preceding any unclear rearrangement[1, 2]. This phenomenon lots been recently observed in the amino acid phenylalanine [3] in a two-color pump probe experiment, where the production of ionic fragments Was measured as a function of the time delay between the two pulses and charge fluctuations manifested as sub-4.5 fs oscillations in the quantum yield of a spcific doubly charged fragment. We present our latcst results in glycine, and compare with previous findings in pheitylalanine [3]. We seek to perform a systematic study including larger aminoncids such as tryptophan.