An efficient method to calculate excitation energy transfer in light-harvesting systems: application to the Fenna–Matthews–Olson complex

Abstract

A master equation derived from non-Markovian quantum state diffusion is used to calculate the excitation energy transfer in the photosynthetic Fenna–Matthews–Olson pigment–protein complex at various temperatures. This approach allows us to treat spectral densities that explicitly contain the coupling to internal vibrational modes of the chromophores. Moreover, the method is very efficient and as a result the transfer dynamics can be calculated within about 1 min on a standard PC, making systematic investigations w.r.t. parameter variations tractable. After demonstrating that our approach is able to reproduce the results of the numerically exact hierarchical equations of motion approach, we show how the inclusion of vibrational modes influences the transfer.