Energy Propagation in Biological System for Photosynthesis

• Main Authors: Lee, Yi Chin, 李奕璟
• Other Authors: Lin, Hsiu Hau
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/43728563507704818947

碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 物理系 === 104 === Biological systems are wet and warm, excluding explicit quantum phenomena except chemical structures and interactions. However, recent experiments reveal strong evidence that energy propagation in photosynthesis remains quantum coherent without full explanation at this point. Here we investigate the quantum dynamics of energy propagation in photosynthesis through the biological network composed of seven primary FMO complex proteins. The effects from the biological environment are included implicitly through the Lindblad equation for the reduced seven-site Hamiltonian. Numerical simulations reveal non-monotonic energy flows to the reaction center and some reoccurrence of probability accumulation in the transient states. Our results show that the quantum dynamics is much richer and cannot be captured by the semi-classical stochastic processes. Further investigation is in order to achieve full understanding of the quantum coherence for energy and information propagations in biological systems.