Abstract
Photosynthesis is not only the most important of all photochemical and, indeed, chemical, reactions but its primary photochemical processes all occur on the sub-nanosecond time scale. The two principal phenomena are light harvesting of the absorbed energy in the antenna pigments of the photosynthetic unit and electron transfer chemistry in the reaction centre to which this energy is transferred. Picosecond studies of the former are mainly by time resolved fluorescence measurements on algae and the chloroplasts of green plants, and in the latter by absorption measurements on the isolated reaction centres from photo- synthetic bacteria. In the early experiments, high intensities led to unexpected results but these are now well understood and the effect can either be utilised or eliminated. The subject is developing very rapidly and further progress is more dependent on the availability of well characterised biological or model systems than on further developments of laser technology.
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Porter, G. (1984). The Sub-Nanosecond Regime in Photosynthesis. In: Eisenthal, K.B. (eds) Applications of Picosecond Spectroscopy to Chemistry. NATO ASI Series, vol 127. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6427-3_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6427-3_1
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