Modelling of plasmon-enhanced fluorescence in a single light-harvesting complex near a gold nanorod

摘要

LHCII - the main light-harvesting complex of plants and green algae - is the most abundant membrane protein on earth. Here, we investigate theoretically the effect of exciton-plasmon coupling on LHCII's fluorescence quantum yield and compare our modelling results to experimental data where plasmon-enhanced fluorescence has been reported in an LHCII-gold nanorod system. One of the models relies on the modified Gersten-Nitzan approach; the other is based on classical plexcitonics. We show that the latter is more robust and leads to more realistic enhancement factors.