Interplay of vibration- and environment-assisted energy transfer

TL;DR

This paper investigates how vibrationally assisted energy transfer and environment-assisted quantum transport influence excitonic energy transfer in photosynthetic systems, revealing their interplay under different noise regimes.

Contribution

It provides a combined analysis of VAET and ENAQT effects on energy transfer, considering quantum and classical environments within a unified model.

Findings

Weak classical noise hampers VAET-enhanced transfer.

Strong noise reproduces ENAQT features, including Zeno suppression.

The interplay depends on noise strength and vibrational interactions.

Abstract

We study the interplay between two environmental influences on excited state energy transfer in photosynthetic light harvesting complexes, namely, vibrationally assisted energy transfer (VAET) and environment-assisted quantum transport (ENAQT), considering a dimeric chromophore donor-acceptor model as a prototype for larger systems. We demonstrate how the basic features of the excitonic energy transfer are influenced by these two environments, both separately and together, with the environment being fully quantum in the case of VAET and treated in the Haken-Strobl-Reineker classical limit in the case of ENAQT. Our results reveal that in the weak noise regime, the presence of a classical noise source is detrimental to the energy transfer that is resonantly assisted by the exciton-vibration interactions intrinsic to VAET. In the strong noise regime we reproduce all the features of ENAQT including the turnover into a Zeno regime where energy transfer is suppressed, and VAET is insignificant.