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Photosynthetic light harvesting provides a natural blueprint for bioengineered and biomimetic solar energy and light detection technologies. Recent evidence suggests some individual light harvesting protein complexes (LHCs) and LHC subunits…
Recent developments in synthetic and supramolecular chemistry have created opportunities to design organic systems with tailored nanoscale structure for various technological applications. A key application area is the capture of light…
Large scale simulations of light-matter interaction in natural photosynthetic antenna complexes containing more than one hundred thousands chlorophyll molecules, comparable with natural size, have been performed. Photosynthetic antenna…
Giant strides in ultrashort laser pulse technology have enabled real-time observation of dynamical processes in complex molecular systems. Specifically, the discovery of oscillatory transients in the two-dimensional electronic spectra of…
Using the reduced density matrix formalism the exciton scattering in light-harvesting systems of purple bacteria is calculated. The static disorder (fluctuations of the site energies) as well as the dynamic disorder (dissipation) is taken…
Photosynthetic antenna complexes are responsible for absorbing energy from sunlight and transmitting it to remote locations where it can be stored. Recent experiments have found that this process involves long-lived quantum coherence…
We examine computational techniques and methodologies currently in use to explore electronic excitation energy transfer in the context of light-harvesting complexes in photosynthetic antenna systems, and comment on some new insights into…
Recently it has been discovered---contrary to expectations of physicists as well as biologists---that the energy transport during photosynthesis, from the chlorophyll pigment that captures the photon to the reaction centre where glucose is…
The remarkable rotational symmetry of the photosynthetic antenna complexes of purple bacteria has long been thought to enhance their light harvesting and excitation energy transport. We study the role of symmetry by modeling hypothetical…
We provide a unified theoretical approach to the quantum dynamics of absorption of single photons and subsequent excitonic energy transfer in photosynthetic light-harvesting complexes. Our analysis combines a continuous mode <n>-photon…
Light-harvesting complexes in natural photosynthetic systems, such as those in purple bacteria, consist of photo-reactive chromophores embedded in densely packed "antenna" systems organized in well-defined nanostructures. In the case of…
The electronic excitation population and coherence dynamics in the chromophores of the photosynthetic light harvesting complex 2 (LH2) B850 ring from purple bacteria (Rhodopseudomonas acidophila) have been studied theoretically at both…
The Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) antennae complex, responsible for light harvesting in green sulfur bacteria, consists of three monomers, each with seven chromophores. Here we show that multiple subsystems of the seven chromophores can…
The coherence of light has been proposed as a quantum-mechanical control for enhancing light-harvesting efficiency. In particular, optical coherence can be manipulated by changing either the polarization state or spectral phase of the…
Phycobilisomes (PBS) are massive structures that absorb and transfer light energy to photochemical reaction centers. Among the range of light harvesting systems, PBS are considered to be excellent solutions for absorption cross-sections but…
The physical basis for observed long-lived electronic coherence in photosynthetic light-harvesting systems is identified using an analytically soluble model. Three physical features are found to be responsible for their long coherence…
Coherence-enhanced light harvesting has not been directly observed experimentally, despite theoretical evidence that coherence can significantly enhance light-harvesting performance. The main experimental obstacle has been the difficulty in…
The initial energy transfer in photosynthesis occurs between the light-harvesting pigments and on ultrafast timescales. We analyze the carotenoid to bacteriochlorophyll energy transfer in LH2 Marichromatium purpuratum as well as in an…
Recent observations of coherence in photosynthetic complexes have led to the question of whether quantum effects can occur in vivo, not under femtosecond laser pulses but in incoherent sunlight and at steady state, and, if so, whether the…
The recently suggested possibility that weak vibronic transitions can be excitonically enhanced in light-harvesting complexes is studied in detail. A vibronic exciton dimer model which includes ground state vibrations is investigated using…