Architecture and dynamics of proteins and aqueous solvation complexes

For this thesis, the molecular dynamics of water and biological (model) systems have been studied with advanced nonlinear optical techniques. In chapters 4-5, the technique of femtosecond mid-infrared pump probe spectroscopy has been used to study the energy transfer and the reorientational dynamics of water molecules in solutions containing different solutes. In chapter 6, two-dimensional infrared (2D-IR) spectroscopy has been used to study the energy transfer dynamics between vibrational marker modes of the protein backbone of an antifreeze protein. In chapter 7, the same technique was used to determine the preferred geometry of a salt-bridge model complex in solution. The last chapter of this thesis shows how vibrational sum-frequency generation spectroscopy can be used to determine the absolute configuration of chiral (bio)molecules at interfaces.