Unveiling the Excited State Dynamics of Indole in Solution

J Chem Theory Comput. 2023 Jul 11;19(13):4114-4124. doi: 10.1021/acs.jctc.3c00221. Epub 2023 Jun 17.

Abstract

In this paper, we reconstruct in detail the dynamics of the emitting electronic excited state of aqueous indole, investigating its relaxation mechanism and kinetics to be related to the time-dependent fluorescence signal. Taking advantage of the results shown in a very recent paper, we were able to model the relaxation process in solution in terms of the transitions between two gas-phase singlet electronic states (1La and 1Lb), subsequently irreversibly relaxing to the gas-phase singlet dark state (1πσ*). A comparison of the results with the available experimental data shows that the relaxation mechanism we obtain by our theoretical-computational model is reliable, reproducing rather accurately all the experimental observables.