Characterizing the dark state in thymine and uracil by double resonance spectroscopy and quantum computation

We report on gas phase double resonant spectroscopy of both the ground state and the dark excited state in isolated uracil and thymine. We also report lifetimes of the dark state for different excitation wavelengths. In combination with ab initio calculations the results suggest that the dark state is of triplet (3ππ*) character.