https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2013-40170-x
Regular Article
Effect of complex inter-site couplings on the excitation energy transfer in the FMO complex
1 School of Physics and Optoelectronic
Technology, Dalian University of Technology , Dalian
116024, P.R.
China
2 Centre for Quantum Technologies and
Department of Physics, National University of Singapore, 117543
Singapore,
Singapore
a
e-mail: yixx@dlut.edu.cn
Received:
26
March
2013
Received in final form:
28
April
2013
Published online:
6
August
2013
It is believed that the quantum coherence itself cannot explain the very high excitation energy transfer (EET) efficiency in the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) complex. In this paper, we show that this is not the case if the inter-site couplings take complex values. By phenomenologically introducing phases into the inter-site couplings, we obtain a EET efficiency as high as 0.8972 in contrast to 0.6781 with real inter-site couplings. Dependence of the EET efficiency on the initial states is elaborated. Effects of fluctuations in the site energies and inter-site couplings are also examined.
Key words: Optical Phenomena and Photonics
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag 2013