Enhancement of coherent energy transport by disorder and temperature in light harvesting processes

We investigate the influence of static disorder and thermal excitations on excitonic energy transport in the light-harvesting apparatus of photosynthetic systems by solving the Schrödinger equation and taking into account the coherent hoppings of excitons, the rates of exciton creation and annihilat...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Xiong, Shi-Jie, Xiong, Ye, Zhao, Yang
Other Authors: School of Materials Science & Engineering
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2013
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/95039
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/9400
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Description
Summary:We investigate the influence of static disorder and thermal excitations on excitonic energy transport in the light-harvesting apparatus of photosynthetic systems by solving the Schrödinger equation and taking into account the coherent hoppings of excitons, the rates of exciton creation and annihilation in antennas and reaction centers, and the coupling to thermally excited phonons. The antennas and reaction centers are modeled, respectively, as the sources and drains which provide the channels for creation and annihilation of excitons. Phonon modes below a maximum frequency are coupled to the excitons that are continuously created in the antennas and depleted in the reaction centers, and the phonon population in these modes obeys the Bose-Einstein distribution at a given temperature. It is found that the energy transport is not only robust against the static disorder and the thermal noise, but it can also be enhanced by increasing the randomness and temperature in most parameter regimes. Relevance of our work to the highly efficient energy transport in photosynthetic systems is discussed.