An investigation into the energy transfer efficiency of a two-pigment photosynthetic system using a macroscopic quantum model

TL;DR

This study models the energy transfer in a two-pigment photosynthetic system using a macroscopic quantum approach, revealing how macroscopicity influences efficiency and dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a macroscopic quantum model to analyze energy transfer efficiency in photosynthetic systems, highlighting the role of macroscopicity over interaction energy.

Findings

Quantum efficiency is robust to the macroscopicity parameter h.

The ratio of macroscopicity to interaction energy controls energy transfer efficiency.

System dynamics are influenced by changes in macroscopic behavior.

Abstract

Despite several different measures of efficiency that are applicable to the photosynthetic systems, a precise degree of efficiency of these systems is not completely determined. Introducing an efficient model for the dynamics of light-harvesting complexes in biological environments is a major purpose in investigating such systems. Here, we investigate the effect of macroscopic quantum behavior of a system of two pigments on the transport phenomena in this system model which interacts with an oscillating environment. We use the second-order perturbation theory to calculate the time-dependent population of excitonic states of a two-dimensional Hamiltonian using a non-master equation approach. Our results demonstrate that the quantum efficiency is robust with respect to the macroscopicity parameter h solely, but the ratio of macroscopicity over the pigment-pigment interaction energy can be considered as a parameter that may control the energy transfer efficiency at a given time. So, the dynamical behavior and the quantum efficiency of the supposed photosynthetic system may be influenced by a change in the macroscopic behavior of the system.