Dresden 2020 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 33: Protein Structure and Dynamics
BP 33.3: Talk
Thursday, March 19, 2020, 10:00–10:15, ZEU 250
Electronic Quantum Coherence in Photosynthetic Protein Complexes — •Hong-Guang Duan1, Ajay Jha1, Vandana Tiwari1, Richard J. Cogdell2, Khuram Ashraf2, Valentyn I. Prokhorenko1, Michael Thorwart3, and R. J. Dwayne Miller1,4 — 1MPSD, Hamburg — 2Institute of Molecular, Cell & Systems Biology, University of Glasgow, UK — 3I. Institut für Theoretische Physik, UH, Germany — 4University of Toronto, Canada
Quantum mechanics was initially developed in the field of atomic physics and rapidly extended to quantum chemistry in the early 20th century. The extension of seeking quantum effects in biological systems is of one of the important areas of research, termed as quantum biology. Recent experimental studies reported long-lived quantum coherence in the primary step of energy transfer in photosynthetic protein complexes. However, the origin of the coherence is still under debate. To capture the solid evidence of electronic quantum coherence, we studied the quantum dynamics in Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) complex by two-dimensional (2D) electronic spectroscopy at different temperatures. We clearly observed the electronic coherence with time scale of 500 fs at low temperature (20 K). However, the lifetime of electronic coherence is dramatically reduced with increasing of temperature. We observed, at room temperature, the electronic coherence is too short (~60 fs) to play any functional role in the process of energy transfer in FMO complex. Moreover, we identified that the long-lived oscillations in 2D spectra are mainly contributed by Raman modes on the electronic ground states.