Energy-scales convergence for optimal and robust quantum transport in photosynthetic complexes

Underlying physical principles for the high efficiency of excitation energy transfer in light-harvesting complexes are not fully understood. Notably, the degree of robustness of these systems for transporting energy is not known considering their realistic interactions with vibrational and radiative environments within the surrounding solvent and scaffold proteins. In this work, we employ an efficient technique to estimate energy transfer efficiency of such complex excitonic systems. We observe that the dynamics of the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) complex leads to optimal and robust energy transport due to a convergence of energy scales among all important internal and external parameters. In particular, we show that the FMO energy transfer efficiency is optimum and stable with respect to important parameters of environmental interactions including reorganization energy lambda, bath frequency cutoff gamma, temperature T, and bath spatial correlations. We identify the ratio of k(B)lambda T/(h) over bar gamma g as a single key parameter governing quantum transport efficiency, where g is the average excitonic energy gap. (C) 2014 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.