Excimer Intermediates en Route to Long-Lived Charge-Transfer States in Single-Stranded Adenine DNA as Revealed by Nonadiabatic Dynamics

Abstract

The ultrafast time evolution of a single-stranded adenine DNA is studied using a hybrid multiscale quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) scheme coupled to nonadiabatic surface hopping dynamics. As a model, we use (dA)20 where a stacked adenine tetramer is treated quantum chemically. The dynamical simulations combined with on-the-fly quantitative wave function analysis evidence the nature of the long-lived electronically excited states formed upon absorption of UV light. After a rapid decrease of the initially excited excitons, relaxation to monomer-like states and excimers occurs within 100 fs. The former monomeric states then relax into additional excimer states en route to forming stabilized charge-transfer states on a longer timescale of hundreds of femtoseconds. The different electronic-state characters is reflected on the spatial separation between the adenines: excimers and charge-transfer states show a much smaller spatial separation than the monomer-like states and the initially formed excitons.