Coherence and Its Role in Excitation Energy Transfer in Fenna–Matthews–Olson Complex

2017/01/20 by Davinder Singh, Shubhrangshu Dasgupta
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic physics #Chemistry #Coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) #Energy transfer #Excitation #Molecular spectroscopy and chirality #Photochemistry and Electron Transfer Studies #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies #Statistical physics #physics.bio-ph #physics.chem-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1021/acs.jpcb.7b00276

published as J. Phys. Chem. B, 121, 1290-94 (2017)

openalex publication_date 2017/01/20 · arxiv created 2017/08/02 · arxiv updated 2017/08/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We show that the coherence between different bacteriochlorophyll-a (BChla) sites in the Fenna-Matthews-Olson complex is an essential ingredient for excitation energy transfer between various sites. The coherence delocalizes the excitation energy, which results in the redistribution of excitation among all the BChla sites in the steady state. We further show that the system remains partially coherent at the steady state. In our numerical simulation of the non-Markovian density matrix equation, we consider both the inhomogeneity of the protein environment and the effect of active vibronic modes.

Citations

• Decoherence-free subspace and disentanglement dynamics for two qubits in a common non-Markovian squeezed reservoir
• Evidence for wavelike energy transfer through quantum coherence in photosynthetic systems
• Dynamics of the dissipative two-state system
• Influence of pigment-protein coupling on excitation energy transfer in FMO complex
• Quantum biology