Exploiting structured environments for efficient energy transfer: The phonon antenna mechanism

TL;DR

This paper introduces the phonon antenna as a design principle for optimizing energy transfer in light-harvesting systems, inspired by quantum coherence effects in photosynthetic complexes, and suggests its broader applicability.

Contribution

The paper identifies the phonon antenna mechanism as a key principle for enhancing energy transfer efficiency and demonstrates its relevance in biological systems like the Fenna-Matthews-Olson complex.

Findings

Fenna-Matthews-Olson complex operates near an optimal phonon antenna configuration

Inter-pigment coherence influences spectral sampling of environmental fluctuations

The phonon antenna principle can be applied to artificial light-harvesting systems

Abstract

A non-trivial interplay between quantum coherence and dissipative environment-driven dynamics is becoming increasingly recognised as key for efficient energy transport in photosynthetic pigment-protein complexes, and converting these biologically-inspired insights into a set of design principles that can be implemented in artificial light-harvesting systems has become an active research field. Here we identify a specific design principle - the phonon antenna - that demonstrates how inter-pigment coherence is able to modify and optimize the way that excitations spectrally sample their local environmental fluctuations. We place this principle into a broader context and furthermore we provide evidence that the Fenna-Matthews-Olson complex of green sulphur bacteria has an excitonic structure that is close to such an optimal operating point, and suggest that this general design principle might well be exploited in other biomolecular systems.