| Abstract: | An examination of the ground and excited states of magnesium porphine and pheoporphine and their positive and negative ions using the intermediate neglect of differential overlap/spectroscopic method is reported. It is found that rather large changes in the Mg out-of-plane coordinate can be attained at very little cost in energy. These geometric changes alone can be used to explain the large range of spectroscopic shifts observed in the visible band of chlorophyll that are site dependent. These calculations also show a porphyrin to Mg charge transfer excitation at about 20,000 cm?1, which, if populated and allowed to relax, becomes the lowest excited singlet. This suggests that the initial photochemical event in photosynthesis may be excitation to the visible Q band followed by internal conversion to the charge transfer state accompanied by movement of the Mg atom out of the plane of the ring. This movement could result in intermolecular charge transfer, and relaxation of the Mg atom back to the plane of the ring. The nature of the positive and negative ions of these model chlorophylls is discussed in light of their role as the electron donor and their potential role as initial electron acceptor in photosynthesis. |
