Linear and nonlinear optical properties of nucleic acid bases

Electronic and vibrational (hyper)polarizabilities of neutral nucleic acid bases (uracil, thymine, cytosine, adenine, hypoxanthine and guanine) were determined using Hartree-Fock, correlated MPn (n = 2, 4), CCSD and DFT (B3LYP, B97-1, CAM-B3LYP) methods. The computations were performed in gaseous and aqueous phases for the most stable tautomeric forms. Frequency-dependent second-order hyperpolarizabilities were calculated for the OKE, IDRI, EFISHG and THG nonlinear optical processes at the wavelength of 1064 nm. The results show that the average electronic polarizabilities increase in the order uracil < cytosine < thymine < hypoxanthine < adenine < guanine. This order is also maintained for the electronic hyperpolarizabilities, with the inversion between cytosine and thymine. The response electric properties for the tautomers are almost similar to each other, whereas group substitution and solvation effects are much more significant. Among the DFT methods, the long-range corrected CAM-B3LYP functional gives the better performances, reproducing satisfactorily the correlated ab initio (hyper) polarizability data. (C) 2012 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.