Journal of Physical Chemistry B, Vol.120, No.45, 11637-11643, 2016
Effect of Pulse Shaping on Observing Coherent Energy Transfer in Single Light-Harvesting Complexes
Recent experimental and theoretical studies have revealed that quantum coherence plays an important role in the excitation energy transfer in photosynthetic light harvesting (LH) complexes. Inspired by the recent single-molecule two-color double-pump experiment, we theoretically investigate the effect of pulse shaping on observing coherent energy transfer in the single bacterial LH2 complex. It is found that quantum coherent energy transfer can be observed when the time delay and phase difference between the two laser pulses are controlled independently. However, when the two-color pulses are generated using the pulse-shaping method, how the laser pulses are prepared is crucial to the observation of quantum coherent energy transfer in single photosynthetic complexes.