ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2017
Nature does not rely on long-lived electronic quantum coherence for photosynthetic energy transfer.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 74 papers.
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74 citing papers in PubMed.
- Quantum coherent dynamics in allophycocyanin trimer complex.Science advances · 2026Article
- TENSO: Software Package for Numerically Exact Open Quantum Dynamics Based on Efficient Tree Tensor Network Decomposition of the Hierarchical Equations of Motion.Journal of chemical theory and computation · 2026Article
- Excitonic energy transfer in red algal Photosystem I reveals an evolutionary bridge between cyanobacteria and plants.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Minimization of Disorder as a Key Design Principle for Natural Sizes of Light Harvesting 2 Complexes.The journal of physical chemistry letters · 2026Article
- Rational design of pigment-polymer antenna complexes.Chemical science · 2026Article
- Theoretical study on the influence of different exciton Hamiltonians on the excitation dynamic process of the PE555 complex.RSC advances · 2026Article
- Quantum biology: From mechanisms to medicine.Clinical and translational medicine · 2026Review
- Dissipation Pathways in a Photosynthetic Complex.The journal of physical chemistry letters · 2025Article
- Consistent and Generalizable Effective Model Hamiltonian Framework for Studying Nonadiabatic Dynamics in the Condensed Phase.Journal of chemical theory and computation · 2025Review
- Full microscopic simulations uncover persistent quantum effects in primary photosynthesis.Science advances · 2025Article
- Long Range Coherent Energy Transfer in Artificial Multichromophoric Antenna Systems-A Case of Breaking Kasha's Rule.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- Investigation of quantum trajectories in photosynthetic light harvesting through a quantum stochastic approach.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Ultrafast exciton energy transfer dynamics in the cryptophyte light-harvesting antenna phycoerythrin 566.Frontiers in plant science · 2025Article
- The quantum-classical complexity of consciousness and orchestrated objective reduction.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Intramolecular charge transfer and the function of vibronic excitons in photosynthetic light harvesting.Photosynthesis research · 2024Review
- Temporal witnesses of non-classicality in a macroscopic biological system.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Sub-100-fs energy transfer in coenzyme NADH is a coherent process assisted by a charge-transfer state.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Seeking a quantum advantage with trapped-ion quantum simulations of condensed-phase chemical dynamics.Nature reviews. Chemistry · 2024Review
- Quantum phase synchronization via exciton-vibrational energy dissipation sustains long-lived coherence in photosynthetic antennas.Nature communications · 2024Article
- High-Resolution Frequency-Domain Spectroscopic and Modeling Studies of Photosystem I (PSI), PSI Mutants and PSI Supercomplexes.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
14 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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7 authors.
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Abstract
During the first steps of photosynthesis, the energy of impinging solar photons is transformed into electronic excitation energy of the light-harvesting biomolecular complexes. The subsequent energy transfer to the reaction center is commonly rationalized in terms of excitons moving on a grid of biomolecular chromophores on typical timescales [Formula: see text]100 fs. Today's understanding of the energy transfer includes the fact that the excitons are delocalized over a few neighboring sites, but the role of quantum coherence is considered as irrelevant for the transfer dynamics because it typically decays within a few tens of femtoseconds. This orthodox picture of incoherent energy transfer between clusters of a few pigments sharing delocalized excitons has been challenged by ultrafast optical spectroscopy experiments with the Fenna-Matthews-Olson protein, in which interference oscillatory signals up to 1.5 ps were reported and interpreted as direct evidence of exceptionally long-lived electronic quantum coherence. Here, we show that the optical 2D photon echo spectra of this complex at ambient temperature in aqueous solution do not provide evidence of any long-lived electronic quantum coherence, but confirm the orthodox view of rapidly decaying electronic quantum coherence on a timescale of 60 fs. Our results can be considered as generic and give no hint that electronic quantum coherence plays any biofunctional role in real photoactive biomolecular complexes. Because in this structurally well-defined protein the distances between bacteriochlorophylls are comparable to those of other light-harvesting complexes, we anticipate that this finding is general and directly applies to even larger photoactive biomolecular complexes.
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