Related papers: Structure and efficiency in bacterial photosynthet…
Photosynthesis, the process by which energy from sunlight drives cellular metabolism, relies on a unique organization of light-harvesting and reaction center complexes. Recently, the organization of light-harvesting LH2 complexes and…
Phototrophic organisms such as plants, photosynthetic bacteria and algae use microscopic complexes of pigment molecules to absorb sunlight. Within the light-harvesting complexes, which frequently have several functional and structural…
Photosynthesis is remarkable, achieving near unity light harvesting quantum efficiency in spite of dynamic light conditions and noisy physiological environment. Under these adverse conditions, it remains unknown whether there exists a…
Energy transfer between chromophores in photosynthesis proceeds with near unity quantum efficiency. Understanding the precise mechanisms of these processes is made difficult by the complexity of the electronic structure and interactions…
Light-harvesting bacteria Rhodospirillum Photometricum were recently found to adopt strikingly different architectures depending on illumination conditions. We present analytic and numerical calculations which explain this observation by…
In natural light harvesting systems, the sequential quantum events of photon absorption by specialized biological antenna complexes, charge separation, exciton formation and energy transfer to localized reaction centers culminates in the…
Biology offers a boundless source of adaptation, innovation, and inspiration. A wide range of photosynthetic organisms exist that are capable of harvesting solar light in an exceptionally efficient way, using abundant and low-cost…
The study of how photosynthetic organisms convert light offers insight not only into nature's evolutionary process, but may also give clues as to how best to design and manipulate artificial photosynthetic systems -- and also how far we can…
Thermal light sources can produce photons with strong spatial correlations. We study the role that these correlations might potentially play in bacterial photosynthesis. Our findings show a relationship between the transversal distance…
Photosynthetic organisms harvest light energy, utilizing the absorption and energy transfer properties of protein-bound chromophores. Controlling the harvesting efficiency is critical for the optimal function of the photosynthetic…
Efficient devices for light harvesting and photon sensing are fundamental building blocks of basic energy science and many essential technologies. Recent efforts have turned to biomimicry to design the next generation of light-capturing…
Research into the efficiency of photosynthetic light harvesting has focused on two factors: (1) entanglement of chromophores, and (2) environmental noise. While chromophores are conjugated $\pi$-bonding molecules with strongly correlated…
Light-harvesting and excitation energy transfer in photosynthesis generally involve chlorophyll-molecules, maintained by their host proteins at short distances from each other, this resulting in excitonic coupling. The transfer of…
Photosynthetic systems utilize adaptability to respond efficiently to fluctuations in their light environment. As a result, large photosynthetic yields can be achieved in conditions of low light intensity, while photoprotection mechanisms…
Photosynthesis transfers energy efficiently through a series of antenna complexes to the reaction center where charge separation occurs. Energy transfer in vivo is primarily monitored by measuring fluorescence signals from the small…
It has been suggested that excitation transport in photosynthetic light harvesting complexes features speedups analogous to those found in quantum algorithms. Here we compare the dynamics in these light harvesting systems to the dynamics of…
The process of photosynthesis, the main source of energy in the animate world, converts sunlight into chemical energy. The surprisingly high efficiency of this process is believed to be enabled by an intricate interplay between the quantum…
Most of our current understanding of mechanisms of photosynthesis comes from spectroscopy. However, classical definition of radio-antenna can be extended to optical regime to discuss the function of light-harvesting antennae. Further to our…
Photosynthesis is arguably the fundamental process of Life, since it enables energy from the Sun to enter the food-chain on Earth. It is a remarkable non-equilibrium process in which photons are converted to many-body excitations which…
Living organisms have to adjust to their surrounding in order to survive in stressful conditions. We study this mechanism in one of most primitive creatures - photosynthetic green sulfur bacteria. These bacteria absorb photons very…