Influences of Quantum Mechanically Mixed Electronic and Vibrational Pigment States in 2D Electronic Spectra of Photosynthetic Systems: Strong Electronic Coupling Cases

Insights into Photosynthetic Energy Transfer Gained from Free-Energy Structure: Coherent Transport, Incoherent Hopping, and Vibrational Assistance Revisited

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 photosynthetic systems stimulated a number of theoretical investigations exploring the possible physical mechanisms of the remarkable quantum efficiency of light harvesting processes. In this work, we revisit the elementary aspects of environment-induced fluctuations in the involved electronic energies and present a simple way to understand energy flow with the intuitive picture of relaxation in a funnel-type free-energy landscape. The presented free-energy description of energy transfer reveals that typical photosynthetic systems operate in an almost barrierless regime. The approach also provides insights into the distinction between coherent and incoherent energy transfer and the criteria by which the necessity of the vibrational assistance is considered.

Coherent wavepackets in the Fenna-Matthews-Olson complex are robust to excitonic-structure perturbations caused by mutagenesis

Femtosecond pulsed excitation of light-harvesting complexes creates oscillatory features in their response. This phenomenon has inspired a large body of work aimed at uncovering the origin of the coherent beatings and possible implications for function. Here we exploit site-directed mutagenesis to change the excitonic level structure in Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) complexes and compare the coherences using broadband pump-probe spectroscopy. Our experiments detect two oscillation frequencies with dephasing on a picosecond timescale-both at 77 K and at room temperature. By studying these coherences with selective excitation pump-probe experiments, where pump excitation is in resonance only with the lowest excitonic state, we show that the key contributions to these oscillations stem from ground-state vibrational wavepackets. These experiments explicitly show that the coherences-although in the ground electronic state-can be probed at the absorption resonances of other bacteriochlorophyll molecules because of delocalization of the electronic excitation over several chromophores.

Fluctuations in Electronic Energy Affecting Singlet Fission Dynamics and Mixing with Charge-Transfer State: Quantum Dynamics Study

Singlet fission is a spin-allowed process by which a singlet excited state is converted to two triplet states. To understand mechanisms of the ultrafast fission via a charge transfer (CT) state, one has investigated the dynamics through quantum-dynamical calculations with the uncorrelated fluctuation model; however, the electronic states are expected to experience the same fluctuations induced by the surrounding molecules because the electronic structure of the triplet pair state is similar to that of the singlet state except for the spin configuration. Therefore, the fluctuations in the electronic energies could be correlated, and the 1D reaction coordinate model may adequately describe the fission dynamics. In this work we develop a model for describing the fission dynamics to explain the experimentally observed behaviors. We also explore impacts of fluctuations in the energy of the CT state on the fission dynamics and the mixing with the CT state. The overall behavior of the dynamics is insensitive to values of the reorganization energy associated with the transition from the singlet state to the CT state, although the coherent oscillation is affected by the fluctuations. This result indicates that the mixing with the CT state is rather robust under the fluctuations in the energy of the CT state as well as the high-lying CT state.