Probing biological light-harvesting phenomena by optical cavities

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel optical cavity QED method to directly probe energy transport and exciton dynamics in photosynthetic biomolecules, offering new insights into biological quantum phenomena.

Contribution

It presents a new spectroscopic technique using optical cavities to study quantum effects in biological systems, bridging quantum optics and biochemistry.

Findings

Photon emission statistics reveal energy transfer pathways.

Exciton delocalization can be inferred from photon data.

Estimated exciton energies match theoretical predictions.

Abstract

We propose a driven optical cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) set up aimed at directly probing energy transport dynamics in photosynthetic biomolecules. We show that detailed information concerning energy transfer paths and delocalization of exciton states can be inferred (and exciton energies estimated) from the statistical properties of the emitted photons. This approach provides us with a novel spectroscopic tool for the interrogation of biological systems in terms of quantum optical phenomena which have been usually studied for atomic or solid-state systems, e.g. trapped atoms and semiconductor quantum dots.