| Abstract
| - We demonstrate that the methods of quantum control can be applied successfully to very largemolecules in room temperature liquid solution. Chirped femtosecond pulses are used to excite a green fluorescentprotein mutant in both buffered aqueous solution and solid acrylamide gel. At high energy densities, thefluorescence shows a strong chirp dependence, with positively chirped pulses transferring almost 50% morepopulation to the excited state than negatively chirped pulses. By measuring the photobleaching rate in the gelas a function of pulse chirp, we find that the data are consistent with the bleaching of the protein being dueto a thermal mechanism rather than to an excited-state photoreaction.
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