Abstract
In any photobiological process, the initial step is the absorption of a photon by the receptor pigment, which can transform it into the excited singlet state. This state can undergo a number of processes such as internal conversion to the ground state, photochemical reactions (e.g. isomerisation in rhodopsin, charge separation in chlorophyll), intersystem crossing to the triplet state, etc. The triplet, in turn, can also undergo comparable reactions. Thus a knowledge of the reactivities of excited states is necessary to understand the primary processes of pigments on exposure to light. Such processes can conveniently be studied using flash photolysis, a technique devised and developed by Norrish and Porter (1949), Porter (1950, 1963) and Norrish (1965) to study the absorption spectra and reaction kinetics of triplet states and other transient species.
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© 1991 Plenum Press, New York
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Navaratnam, S., Phillips, G.O. (1991). Application of Laser Flash Photolysis to Study Photoreceptor Pigments. In: Lenci, F., Ghetti, F., Colombetti, G., Häder, DP., Song, PS. (eds) Biophysics of Photoreceptors and Photomovements in Microorganisms. NATO ASI Series, vol 211. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-5988-3_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-5988-3_10
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