Spectral investigation of the electron-impact excitation of the nucleic acid base molecules

Abstract

The investigation ot the slow electron interactions with nucleic acid bases is an important problem for physics, biophysics and radiobiology. Such inelastic processes as excitation, ionization and dissociation of the biomolecules under the influence of the secondary electrons result in the radiative damage. Problems of the triplet metastable states formation of molecules and the abiogenic synthesis of nucleotides are also connected with these processes. However, only the photoexcitation of the biomolecules has been described as the object of the research. The electron-impact excitation has not been practically studied in consequence of the experimental difficulties. The early investigations of the slow electron interactions with biomolecules have been published by us in [1]. Here we describe the experiments with canonical nucleic acid base molecules.