Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 340, Issue 6139, Pages 1448-1451Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1235820
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Funding
- Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion [CSD2007-046-NanoLight.es, MAT2006-08184, FIS2009-08203]
- European Union (European Research Council) [247330]
- Fundacio CELLEX (Barcelona)
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (Glasgow)
- Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO)
- German Research Foundation (DFG) [GRK 1640]
- ICREA Funding Source: Custom
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The initial steps of photosynthesis comprise the absorption of sunlight by pigment-protein antenna complexes followed by rapid and highly efficient funneling of excitation energy to a reaction center. In these transport processes, signatures of unexpectedly long-lived coherences have emerged in two-dimensional ensemble spectra of various light-harvesting complexes. Here, we demonstrate ultrafast quantum coherent energy transfer within individual antenna complexes of a purple bacterium under physiological conditions. We find that quantum coherences between electronically coupled energy eigenstates persist at least 400 femtoseconds and that distinct energy-transfer pathways that change with time can be identified in each complex. Our data suggest that long-lived quantum coherence renders energy transfer in photosynthetic systems robust in the presence of disorder, which is a prerequisite for efficient light harvesting.
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