Impact of undamped and damped intramolecular vibrations on the efficiency of photosynthetic exciton energy transfer

Abstract

In recent years, the role of molecular vibrations in exciton energy transfer taking place during the first stage of photosynthesis attracted increasing interest. Here, we present a model formulated as a Lindblad-type master equation that enables us to investigate the impact of undamped and especially damped intramolecular vibrational modes on the exciton energy transfer, particularly its efficiency. Our simulations confirm the already reported effects that the presence of an intramolecular vibrational mode can compensate the energy detuning of electronic states, thus promoting the energy transfer; and, moreover, that the damping of such a vibrational mode (in other words, vibrational relaxation) can further enhance the efficiency of the process by generating directionality in the energy flow. As a novel result, we show that this enhancement surpasses the one caused by pure dephasing, and we present its dependence on various system parameters (time constants of the environment-induced relaxation and excitation processes, detuning of the electronic energy levels, frequency of the intramolecular vibrational modes, Huang–Rhys factors, temperature) in dimer model systems. We demonstrate that vibrational-relaxation-enhanced exciton energy transfer (VREEET) is robust against the change of these characteristics of the system and occurs in wide ranges of the investigated parameters. With simulations performed on a heptamer model inspired by the Fenna–Matthews–Olson (FMO) complex, we show that this mechanism can be even more significant in larger systems at T = 300 K. Our results suggests that VREEET might be prevalent in light-harvesting complexes.