Femtosecond Dynamics of Excited States of Chlorophyll Tetramer in Water-Soluble Chlorophyll-Binding Protein BoWSCP

The paper reports on the absorption dynamics of chlorophyll a in a symmetric tetrameric complex of the water-soluble chlorophyll-binding protein BoWSCP. It was measured by a broadband femtosecond laser pump-probe spectroscopy within the range from 400 to 750 nm and with a time resolution of 20 fs-200 ps. When BoWSCP was excited in the region of the Soret band at a wavelength of 430 nm, nonradiative intramolecular conversion S3→S1 was observed with a characteristic time of 83 ± 9 fs. When the complex was excited in the region of the Qy band at 670 nm, relaxation transition between two excitonic states of the chlorophyll dimer was observed in the range of 105 ± 10 fs. Absorption spectra of the excited singlet states S1 and S3 of chlorophyll a were obtained. The delocalization of the excited state between exciton-coupled Chl molecules in BoWSCP tetramer changed in time and depended on the excitation energy. When BoWSCP is excited in the Soret band region, an ultrafast photochemical reaction is observed. This could result from the reduction of tryptophan in the vicinity of chlorophyll.

Spin, gravity, and inertia

The gravitational effects in the relativistic quantum mechanics are investigated. The exact Foldy-Wouthuysen transformation is constructed for the Dirac particle coupled to the static spacetime metric. As a direct application, we analyze the nonrelativistic limit of the theory. The new term describing the specific spin (gravitational moment) interaction effect is recovered in the Hamiltonian. The comparison of the true gravitational coupling with the purely inertial case demonstrates that the spin relativistic effects do not violate the equivalence principle for the Dirac fermions.