Coherent open-loop optimal control of light-harvesting dynamics

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how open-loop quantum optimal control techniques can be used to prepare and probe light-harvesting complexes, aiding in understanding their transport mechanisms and environmental interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a method for using optimally shaped laser pulses to control and analyze quantum transport in light-harvesting systems under realistic conditions.

Findings

Optimally shaped laser pulses can prepare specific initial states in light-harvesting complexes.

The method enables efficient probing of quantum dynamics and transport pathways.

Results facilitate discrimination of transport mechanisms and environmental characterization.

Abstract

We apply theoretically open-loop quantum optimal control techniques to provide methods for the verification of various quantum coherent transport mechanisms in natural and artificial light-harvesting complexes under realistic experimental constraints. We demonstrate that optimally shaped laser pulses allow to faithfully prepare the photosystem in specified initial states (such as localized excitation or coherent superposition, i.e. propagating and non-propagating states) and to probe efficiently the dynamics. These results provide a path towards the discrimination of the different transport pathways and to the characterization of environmental properties, enhancing our understanding of the role that coherent processes may play in biological complexes.