Related papers: Exciting out-of-equilibrium states in macromolecul…
In the first part of the present paper (theoretical), the activation of out-of-equilibrium collective oscillations of a macromolecule is described as a classical phonon condensation phenomenon. If a macromolecule is modeled as an open…
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…
Photosynthesis relies on efficient energy relaxation within the excited-state manifold of pigment-protein complexes. Since the protein scaffold is rather flexible, the resulting energetic and structural disorder gives rise to a complex…
Determining how energy flows within and between molecules is crucial for understanding chemical reactions, material properties, and even vital processes such as photosynthesis. While the general principles of energy transfer are well…
Reflection, refraction, and absorption of light by material media are, in general, accompanied by a transfer of optical energy and momentum to the media. Consequently, the eigen-modes of mechanical vibration (phonons) created in the process…
In this paper we consider dynamics of a molecular system subjected to external pumping by a light source. Within a completely quantum mechanical treatment, we derive a general formula, which enables to asses effects of different light…
This paper examines the modulation of proteinoid spiking frequency in response to light. Proteinoids are proteins formed through thermal condensation of amino acids and have been found to exhibit spiking behaviour in response to various…
Until recently it was believed that photosynthesis, a fundamental process for life on earth, could be fully understood with semi-classical models. However, puzzling quantum phenomena have been observed in several photosynthetic…
Representation of molecular vibrational degrees of freedom by independent harmonic oscillators, when describing electronic spectra or electronic excitation energy transport, raises unfavourable effects as vibrational energy relaxation…
Effects of coupling between an molecular exciton and a surface plasmon (exciton-plasmon coupling) on the luminescence properties of the molecule and the surface plasmons are investigated using nonequilibrium Green's function method.…
Following the ideas of Davydov's soliton theory, we study the bio-energy transport in protein molecules. By using a quantum Brownian motion model for a phonon dressed vibrational exciton, we calculate the time-dependence on the mean square…
Exciting atomic oscillations with light is a powerful technique to control the electronic properties of materials, leading to remarkable phenomena such as light-induced superconductivity and ultrafast insulator to metal transitions. Here we…
Vibrational energy transfer from photo-excited single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) to coupled proteins is a key to engineer thermally induced biological reactions such as photothermal therapy. Here, we explored vibrational energy transfer…
We show that the efficient excitation energy transfer in the Fenna-Matthews-Olson molecular aggregate under realistic physiological conditions is fueled by underdamped vibrations of the embedding proteins. For this, we present numerically…
Reabsorption, the multiple scattering of spontaneously emitted photons in optically thick gases, is a major limitation to efficient optical pumping and laser cooling in ultracold gases. We report mitigation of reabsorption using spatial and…
We study the natural excitation of molecular systems, applicable to, for example, photosynthetic light-harvesting complexes, by natural incoherent light. In contrast with the conventional classical models, we show that the light need not…
The energy conversion of oxygenic photosynthesis is triggered by primary charge separation in proteins at the photosystem II reaction center. Here, we investigate the impacts of the protein environment and intramolecular vibrations on…
Photoinduced biological processes occur via one photon absorption in natural light, which is weak, CW and incoherent, but are often studied in the laboratory using pulsed coherent light. Here we compare the response of a molecule to these…
Polaritons, mixed light-matter quasiparticles, undergo a transition to a condensed, macroscopically coherent state at low temperatures or high densities. Recent experiments show that coupling light to organic molecules inside a microcavity…
The coupling of atomic vibrations to electronic excitations - traditionally understood to be a source of energy loss in semiconductors - has recently been explored in photosynthetic light harvesting as a means to circumvent dissipation by…