Abstract

Fluorescence spectroscopy of nucleic acids at room temperature has been limited by the short lifetimes of the excited states of purines and pyrimidines (1) and scarce information is available from measurements of the stationary emission. Recently attempts have been made by using the time structure of synchrotron radiation in order to obtain time resolved emission spectra (2,3). The large pulse width (1.7 ns) of the synchrotron pulse used has however prevented the measurement of response times in the ps domain. Inherently better time resolution is provided by mode locked and synchronously pumped dye laser pulses for the excitation of nucleoside fluorescence. Their detection however has been limited by the time response of photodetectors usually in the range of a few hundred ps. Here we demonstrate the advantage of using multichannel plate detectors with short transient time jitter for single photon detection together with deconvolution procedures for measurements of decay times of a few ps as well as for time resolved fluorescence spectroscopy of nucleic acids.

© 1984 Optical Society of America