How the Molecular Environment Controls Excitation Energy Transfer and Light Harvesting: a Quantum Mechanical Model

摘要

We present a quantum-mechanical study of excitation energy transfer (EET) in chromophores - chlorophylls, carotenoids and bilins - taken from structural models of photosynthetic proteins. The effects of the protein environment is analyzed in terms of variations of each single chromophore's properties and the screening of the chromophore-chromophore interaction. In particular, a distant and shape dependent screening effect is found in contrast to what generally assumed in previous models for EET.