Single photon photoelectron elliptical dichroism of amino acid anions

Abstract

Single photon photoelectron elliptical dichroism (PEELD) has been investigated in the photodetachment of electrosprayed amino acid anions, (i) tryptophan (Trp) and (ii) phenylalanine (Phe). PEELD refers to the variation of the asymmetry parameter G with the ellipticity parameter |S₃/S₀|. For Trp G is found to scale linearly with |S₃/S₀|. For Phe a small but significant deviation from linear scaling is observed in the region of 0.8 ≤ |S₃/S₀| ≤ 1, i.e. approaching perfect circular polarization. Commonalities and differences to existing PEELD literature are being discussed.