Tunneling Lifetime of the ttc/VIp Conformer of Glycine in Low-Temperature Matrices

Conformer ttc/VIp of glycine and glycine-N,N,O-d(3) has been prepared in low-temperature Ar, Kr, Xe, and N-2 matrices by near-infrared (NIR) laser irradiation of the first OH stretching overtone of conformer ttt/Ip. Glycine (and glycine-N,N,O-d(3)) ttc/VIp was found to convert back to ttt/Ip in the dark by hydrogen-atom tunneling. The observed half-lives of ttc/VIp in Ar, Kr, and Xe matrices at 12 K were 4.4 +/- 1 s (50.0 +/- 1 h), 4.0 +/- 1 s (48.0 +/- 1 h), and 2.8 +/- 1 s (99.3 +/- 2 h), respectively. In correspondence with the observation for the cis-to-trans conversion of formic and acetic acid, the tunneling half-life of glycine ttc/VIp in a N-2 matrix is more than 3 orders of magnitude longer (6.69 X 10(3) and 1.33 X 10(4) s for two different sites) than in noble gas matrices due to complex formation with the host molecules. The present results are important to understand the lack of experimental observation of some computationally predicted conformers of glycine and other amino acids

Two-electron relativistic corrections to the potential energy surface, and vibration-rotation levels of water

Two-electron relativistic corrections to the ground-state electronic energy of water are determined as a function of geometry at over 300 points. The corrections include the two-electron Darwin term (D2) of the Coulomb–Pauli Hamiltonian, obtained at the cc-pVQZ CCSD(T) level of theory, as well as the Gaunt and Breit corrections, calculated perturbationally using four-component fully variational Dirac–Hartree–Fock (DHF) wavefunctions and two different basis sets. Based on the calculated energy points, fitted relativistic correction surfaces are constructed. These surfaces are used with a high-accuracy ab initio nonrelativistic Born–Oppenheimer (BO) potential energy hypersurface to calculate vibrational band origins and rotational term values for H216O. The calculations suggest that these two-electron relativistic corrections, which go beyond the usual kinetic relativistic effects and which have so far been neglected in rovibrational calculations on light many-electron molecular systems, have a substantial influence on the rotation–vibration levels of water. The three effects considered have markedly different characteristics for the stretching and bending levels, which often leads to fortuitous cancellation of errors. The effect of the Breit interaction on the rovibrational levels is intermediate between the effect of the kinetic relativistic correction and that of the one-electron Lamb-shift effect

Direction-dependent secondary bonds and their stepwise melting in a uracil-based molecular crystal studied by infrared spectroscopy and theoretical modeling

Three types of supramolecular interactions are identified in the three crystallographic directions in crystals of 1,4-bis[(1-hexylurac-6-yl)ethynyl]benzene, a uracil-based molecule with a linear backbone. These three interactions, characterized by their strongest component, are: intermolecular double H-bonds along the molecular axis, London dispersion interaction of hexyl chains connecting these linear assemblies, and $\pi$--$\pi$ stacking of the aromatic rings perpendicular to the molecular planes. On heating, two transitions happen, disordering of hexyl chains at 473 K, followed by H-bond melting at 534 K. The nature of the bonds and transitions was established by matrix-isolation and temperature-dependent infrared spectroscopy and supported by theoretical computations

Image-based Classification of Variable Stars: First Results from Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment Data

Recently, machine learning methods presented a viable solution for automated classification of image-based data in various research fields and business applications. Scientists require a fast and reliable solution to be able to handle the always growing enormous amount of data in astronomy. However, so far astronomers have been mainly classifying variable star light curves based on various pre-computed statistics and light curve parameters. In this work we use an image-based Convolutional Neural Network to classify the different types of variable stars. We used images of phase-folded light curves from the OGLE-III survey for training, validating and testing and used OGLE-IV survey as an independent data set for testing. After the training phase, our neural network was able to classify the different types between 80 and 99%, and 77-98% accuracy for OGLE-III and OGLE-IV, respectively.Comment: Accepted in ApJL, 11pages, 5 figures, 8 table

Foldamers of β-peptides : conformational preference of peptides formed by rigid building blocks : The first MI-IR spectra of a triamide nanosystem

To determine local chirality driven conformational preferences of small aminocyclobutane-1-carboxylic acid derivatives, X-(ACBA) n -Y, their matrix-isolation IR spectra were recorded and analyzed. For the very first time model systems of this kind were deposited in a frozen (~10 K) noble gas matrix to reduce line width and thus, the recorded sharp vibrational lines were analyzed in details. For cis-(S,R)-1 monomer two “zigzag” conformers composed of either a six or an eight-membered H-bonded pseudo ring was identified. For trans-(S,S)-2 stereoisomer a zigzag of an eight-membered pseudo ring and a helical building unit were determined. Both findings are fully consistent with our computational results, even though the relative conformational ratios were found to vary with respect to measurements. For the dimers (S,R,S,S)-3 and (S,S,S,R)-4 as many as four different cis,trans and three different trans,cis conformers were localized in their matrix-isolation IR (MI-IR) spectra. These foldamers not only agree with the previous computational and NMR results, but also unambiguously show for the first time the presence of a structure made of a cis,trans conformer which links a “zigzag” and a helical foldamer via a bifurcated H-bond. The present work underlines the importance of MI-IR spectroscopy, applied for the first time for triamides to analyze the conformational pool of small biomolecules. We have shown that the local chirality of a β-amino acid can fully control its backbone folding preferences. Unlike proteogenic α-peptides, β- and especially (ACBA) n type oligopeptides could thus be used to rationally design and influence foldamer’s structural preferences

Anatomy of relativistic energy corrections in light molecular systems

C1 - Journal Articles Referee

HeI PHOTOELECTRON SPECTROSCOPY AND ELECTRONIC STRUCTURE OF ALKYL-LITHIUM CLUSTERS

Author Institution: Department of General and Inorganic Chemistry, E\""{o}tv\""{o}s UniversityHeI photoelectron spectra of some alkyl-lithium tetrameric and hexameric clusters have been recorded. In the low energy region (ca. 6.0-9.0 eV) bands have been assigned to ionization from the Li-C cluster orbitals. Ionization from the triply and doubly degenerate orbitals of the tetramers ($T_{d}$ symmetry) and hexamers ($D_{3d}$ symmetry), respectively, causes Jahn-Teller (JT) distortion of the clusters. Ab initio quantum chemical calculations have been performed to understand the nature and extent of the JT distortions