[amor de cosmos]

Key Processes of Photosynthesis Simulated on the Quantum Level
Press Release No. 252/2013
8 November 2013

Physicists discover new properties of energy transport in experiments on “atomic giants”

By realising an artificial quantum system, physicists at Heidelberg University have simulated key processes of photosynthesis on a quantum level with high spatial and temporal resolution. In their experiment with Rydberg atoms the team of Prof. Dr. Matthias Weidemüller and Dr. Shannon Whitlock discovered new properties of energy transport. This work is an important step towards answering the question of how quantum physics can contribute to the efficiency of energy conversion in synthetic systems, for example in photovoltaics. The new discoveries, which were made at the Center for Quantum Dynamics and the Institute for Physics of Heidelberg University, have now been published in the journal “Science”.

In their research, Prof. Weidemüller and his team begin with the question of how the energy of light can be efficiently collected and converted elsewhere into a different form, e.g. into chemical or electric energy. Nature has found an especially efficient way to accomplish this in photosynthesis. Light energy is initially absorbed in light-harvesting complexes – an array of membrane proteins – and then transported to a molecular reaction centre by means of structures called nanoantennae; in the reaction centre the light is subsequently transformed into chemical energy. “This process is nearly 100 per cent efficient. Despite intensive research we’re still at a loss to understand which mechanisms are responsible for this surprisingly high efficiency,” says Prof. Weidemüller. Based on the latest research, scientists assume that quantum effects like entanglement, where spatially separated objects influence one another, play an important role.

http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/presse/...nebene_en.html