Superradiance Transition in Photosynthetic Light-Harvesting Complexes

Abstract

We investigate the role of long-lasting quantum coherence in the efficiency of energy transport at room temperature in Fenna-Matthews-Olson photosynthetic complexes. The excitation energy transfer due to the coupling of the light harvesting complex to the reaction center ("sink") is analyzed using an effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. We show that, as the coupling to the reaction center is varied, maximal efficiency in energy transport is achieved in the vicinity of the superradiance transition, characterized by a segregation of the imaginary parts of the eigenvalues of the effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. Our results demonstrate that the presence of the sink (which provides a quasi--continuum in the energy spectrum) is the dominant effect in the energy transfer which takes place even in absence of a thermal bath. This approach allows one to study the effects of finite temperature and the effects of any coupling scheme to the reaction center. Moreover, taking into account a realistic electric dipole interaction, we show that the optimal distance from the reaction center to the Fenna-Matthews-Olson system occurs at the superradiance transition, and we show that this is consistent with available experimental data.

9 pages

References in corpus (6)

• Dephasing assisted transport: Quantum networks and biomolecules
• Environment-Assisted Quantum Transport
• Highly efficient energy excitation transfer in light-harvesting complexes: The fundamental role of noise-assisted transport
• Role of quantum coherence in chromophoric energy transport
• Anomalous Localization in Low-Dimensional Systems with Correlated Disorder
• Shot noise and transport in small quantum cavities with large openings

Cited by in corpus (52)

• Non-Hermitian Physics
• A review of progress in the physics of open quantum systems: theory and experiment
• Superradiant Quantum Heat Engine
• Atomistic study of energy funneling in the light-harvesting complex of green sulfur bacteria
• Cooperative shielding in many-body systems with long-range interaction
• Disorder-Enhanced and Disorder-Independent Transport with Long-Range Hopping: Application to Molecular Chains in Optical Cavities
• Shielding and localization in presence of long range hopping
• Cooperative Robustness to Static Disorder: Superradiance and localization in a nanoscale ring to model natural light-harvesting systems
• Nearby states in non-Hermitian quantum systems
• Path Laplacian operators and superdiffusive processes on graphs. I. One-dimensional case
• On the existence of superradiant excitonic states in microtubules
• Realization of superabsorption by time reversal of superradiance
• Non-Hermitian Hamiltonian approach to quantum transport in disordered networks with sinks: validity and effectiveness
• Emergent ultrafast phenomena in correlated oxides and heterostructures
• Path Laplacian operators and superdiffusive processes on graphs. II. Two-dimensional lattice
• Subradiant hybrid states in the open 3D Anderson-Dicke model
• Cooperative robustness to dephasing: single-exciton Superradiance in a nanoscale ring to model natural light-harvesting systems
• Interplay of different environments in open quantum systems: Breakdown of the additive approximation
• A Quantum Biological Switch Based on Superradiance Transitions
• Opening-Assisted Coherent Transport in the Deep Classical Regime
• Gain and loss in open quantum systems
• Macroscopic coherence as an emergent property in molecular nanotubes
• Towards high-temperature coherence-enhanced transport in few-atomic layers heterostructures
• Optimal Dephasing for Ballistic Energy Transfer in Disordered Linear Chains
• Collective couplings: rectification and supertransmittance
• Superradiance Transition and Nonphotochemical Quenching in Photosynthetic Complexes
• Efficient light harvesting and photon sensing via engineered cooperative effects
• Noise-assisted quantum electron transfer in photosynthetic complexes
• Optimal efficiency of quantum transport in a disordered trimer
• Real and imaginary energy gaps: a comparison between single excitation Superradiance and Superconductivity and robustness to disorder
• Quantum signal transmission through a single-qubit chain
• Environment-Protected Solid State Based Distributed Charge Qubit
• Robustness of optimal transport in disordered interacting many-body networks
• Bio-inspired natural sunlight-pumped lasers
• Modeling of Low and High Frequency Noise by Slow and Fast Fluctuators
• Revealing Collective Emission in the Single-to-Bulk Transition of Quantum Emitters in Nanodiamond Agglomerates
• Critical States Embedded in the Continuum
• Quantum Transports in Two-Dimensions with Long Range Hopping: Shielding, Localization and the Extended Isolated State
• Electric-field assisted optimal quantum transport of photo-excitations in polar heterostructures
• Multi-Scale Exciton and Electron Transfer in Multi-Level Donor-Acceptor System
• Diffusion of excitation and power-law localization in long-range-coupled strongly disordered systems
• Universal stability of coherently diffusive 1D systems with respect to decoherence
• On Improving the Performance of Nonphotochemical Quenching in CP29 Light-Harvesting Antenna Complex
• Quantum stochastic transport along chains
• Fermi polaron in a dissipative bath with spin-orbit coupling
• The extended star graph as a light-harvesting-complex prototype: excitonic absorption speedup by peripheral energy defect tuning
• Noise-Assisted Quantum Exciton and Electron Transfer in Bio-Complexes with Finite Donor and Acceptor Bandwidths
• MQED-QD: An Open-Source Package for Quantum Dynamics Simulation in Complex Dielectric Environments
• Breakdown of quantum-to-classical correspondence for diffusion in high temperature thermal environment
• Electron Transfer Reactions: Generalized Spin-Boson Approach
• Non-Hermitian Hamiltonian Approach for Two-Dimensional Coherent Spectra of Driven Systems
• Quantum walk in stochastic environment