Structural Tuning of Quantum Decoherence and Coherent Energy Transfer in Photosynthetic Light Harvesting

Chirped Laser Pulse Control of Vibronic Wavepackets and Energy Transfer in Phycocyanin 645

Photosynthetic organisms use light-harvesting complexes to increase the spectrum of light that they absorb from solar photons. Recent ultrafast spectroscopic studies have revealed that efficient (sub-ps) energy transfer is mediated by vibronic coherence in the phycobiliprotein phycocyanin 645 (PC645). Here, we report studies that employ broadband pump-probe spectroscopy with linearly chirped excitation pulses to further investigate the relationship between vibronic state preparation and energy transfer dynamics in PC645. Negatively chirped pulse excitation is found to enhance wavepackets of a high-frequency mode (1580 cm-1) and increase the rate of downhill energy transfer, while on the other hand, positively chirped pulses suppress these oscillatory features and decrease this rate. Model calculations incorporating the influence of the chirped pump pulse are used to understand its effect on initial state preparation. These results provide mechanistic insight into how the overall nonequilibrium rate of energy transfer is influenced by initial state preparation.

Intramolecular charge transfer and the function of vibronic excitons in photosynthetic light harvesting

A widely discussed explanation for the prevalence of pairs or clusters of closely spaced electronic chromophores in photosynthetic light-harvesting proteins is the presence of ultrafast and highly directional excitation energy transfer pathways mediated by vibronic excitons, the delocalized optical excitations derived from mixing of the electronic and vibrational states of the chromophores. We discuss herein the hypothesis that internal conversion processes between exciton states on the <100 fs timescale are possible when the excitonic potential energy surfaces are controlled by the vibrational modes that induce charge transfer character in a strongly coupled system of chromophores. We discuss two examples, the peridinin-chlorophyll protein from marine dinoflagellates and the intact phycobilisome from cyanobacteria, in which the intramolecular charge-transfer (ICT) character arising from out-of-plane distortion of the conjugation of carotenoid or bilin chromophores also results in localization of the initially delocalized optical excitation on the vibrational timescale. Tuning of the ground state conformations of the chromophores to manipulate their ICT character provides a natural photoregulatory mechanism, which would control the overall quantum yield of excitation energy transfer by turning on and off the delocalized character of the optical excitations.

The Energy Transfer Yield between Carotenoids and Chlorophylls in Peridinin Chlorophyll a Protein Is Robust against Mutations

The energy transfer (ET) from carotenoids (Cars) to chlorophylls (Chls) in photosynthetic complexes occurs with almost unitary efficiency thanks to the synergistic action of multiple finely tuned channels whose photophysics and dynamics are not fully elucidated yet. We investigated the energy flow from the Car peridinin (Per) to Chl a in the peridinin chlorophyll a protein (PCP) from marine algae Amphidinium carterae by using two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy (2DES) with a 10 fs temporal resolution. Recently debated hypotheses regarding the S2-to-S1 relaxation of the Car via a conical intersection and the involvement of possible intermediate states in the ET were examined. The comparison with an N89L mutant carrying the Per donor in a lower-polarity environment helped us unveil relevant details on the mechanisms through which excitation was transferred: the ET yield was conserved even when a mutation perturbed the optimization of the system thanks to the coexistence of multiple channels exploited during the process.

Dynamics of Excitons in Conjugated Molecules and Organic Semiconductor Systems

The exciton, an excited electron-hole pair bound by Coulomb attraction, plays a key role in photophysics of organic molecules and drives practically important phenomena such as photoinduced mechanical motions of a molecule, photochemical conversions, energy transfer, generation of free charge carriers, etc. Its behavior in extended π-conjugated molecules and disordered organic films is very different and very rich compared with exciton behavior in inorganic semiconductor crystals. Due to the high degree of variability of organic systems themselves, the exciton not only exerts changes on molecules that carry it but undergoes its own changes during all phases of its lifetime, that is, birth, conversion and transport, and decay. The goal of this review is to give a systematic and comprehensive view on exciton behavior in π-conjugated molecules and molecular assemblies at all phases of exciton evolution with emphasis on rates typical for this dynamic picture and various consequences of the above dynamics. To uncover the rich variety of exciton behavior, details of exciton formation, exciton transport, exciton energy conversion, direct and reverse intersystem crossing, and radiative and nonradiative decay are considered in different systems, where these processes lead to or are influenced by static and dynamic disorder, charge distribution symmetry breaking, photoinduced reactions, electron and proton transfer, structural rearrangements, exciton coupling with vibrations and intermediate particles, and exciton dissociation and annihilation as well.

Funneling dynamics in a phenylacetylene trimer: Coherent excitation of donor excitonic states and their superposition

Funneling dynamics in conjugated dendrimers has raised great interest in the context of artificial light-harvesting processes. Photoinduced relaxation has been explored by time-resolved spectroscopy and simulations, mainly by semiclassical approaches or referring to open quantum systems methods, within the Redfield approximation. Here, we take the benefit of an ab initio investigation of a phenylacetylene trimer, and in the spirit of a divide-and-conquer approach, we focus on the early dynamics of the hierarchy of interactions. We build a simplified but realistic model by retaining only bright electronic states and selecting the vibrational domain expected to play the dominant role for timescales shorter than 500 fs. We specifically analyze the role of the in-plane high-frequency skeletal vibrational modes involving the triple bonds. Open quantum system non-adiabatic dynamics involving conical intersections is conducted by separating the electronic subsystem from the high-frequency tuning and coupling vibrational baths. This partition is implemented within a robust non-perturbative and non-Markovian method, here the hierarchical equations of motion. We will more precisely analyze the coherent preparation of donor states or of their superposition by short laser pulses with different polarizations. In particular, we extend the π-pulse strategy for the creation of a superposition to a V-type system. We study the relaxation induced by the high-frequency vibrational collective modes and the transitory dissymmetry, which results from the creation of a superposition of electronic donor states.

Visualizing Quantum Coherence Based on Single-Molecule Coherent Modulation Microscopy

Massive magical phenomena in nature are closely related to quantum effects at the microscopic scale. However, the lack of straightforward methods to observe the quantum coherent dynamics in integrated biological systems limits the study of essential biological mechanisms. In this work, we developed a single-molecule coherent modulation (SMCM) microscopy by combining the superior features of single-molecule microscopy with ultrafast spectroscopy. By introducing the modem technology and defining the coherent visibility, we realized visualization and real-time observation of the decoherence process of a single molecule influenced by the microenvironment for the first time. In particular, we applied this technique to observe the quantum coherent properties of the entire chlorella cells and found the correlation between the coherent visibility and metabolic activities, which may have potential applications in molecular diagnostics and precision medicine.

Toward the laser control of electronic decoherence

Controlling electronic decoherence in molecules is an outstanding challenge in chemistry. Recent advances in the theory of electronic decoherence [B. Gu and I. Franco, J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 9, 773 (2018)] have demonstrated that it is possible to manipulate the rate of electronic coherence loss via control of the relative phase in the initial electronic superposition state. This control emerges when there are both relaxation and pure-dephasing channels for decoherence and applies to initially separable electron-nuclear states. In this paper, we demonstrate that (1) such an initial superposition state and the subsequent quantum control of electronic decoherence can be created via weak-field one-photon photoexcitation with few-cycle laser pulses of definite carrier envelope phase (CEP), provided the system is initially prepared in a separable electron-nuclear state. However, we also demonstrate that (2) when stationary molecular states (which are generally not separable) are considered, such one-photon laser control disappears. Remarkably, this happens even in situations in which the initially factorizable state is an excellent approximation to the stationary state with fidelity above 98.5%. The laser control that emerges for initially separable states is shown to arise because these states are superpositions of molecular eigenstates that open up CEP-controllable interference routes at the one-photon limit. Using these insights, we demonstrate that (3) the laser control of electronic decoherence from stationary states can be recovered by using a two-pulse control scheme, with the first pulse creating a vibronic superposition state and the second one inducing interference. This contribution advances a viable scheme for the laser control of electronic decoherence and exposes a surprising artifact that is introduced by widely used initially factorizable system-bath states in the field of open quantum systems.