Excitement over something small: The protonated Schiff base of retinal photoisomerizes on an excited-state hypersurface (S1) that connects the Franck–Condon (FC) point via a flat valley centered on a planar structure (SP) to a conical intersection (CI; see picture). Wave-packet (gray hat) quantum dynamics shows that the depletion of the S1 population switches from mono- to biexponential when a small ridge (dotted line) between SP and CI is present.
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Olivucci et al. (2005) studied this question.
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