Much of the interest arose because the finding of electronic quantum coherence is a “warm, wet, and noisy” biological system was considered very surprising. The observation of long-lived electronic quantum coherence in a light harvesting protein (the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) complex) by Fleming and coworkers (Brixner 2005 Nature, Engel 2007 Nature) stimulated a huge burst of activity among theorists and experimentalists. Further, this speculation has led to much effort being devoted to elucidation of the quantum mechanisms of the photosynthetic excitation energy transfer. These findings have led to the suggestion that quantum coherence might play a role in achieving the remarkable quantum efficiency of photosynthetic light harvesting. Recent two-dimensional electronic spectroscopic experiments revealed that electronic energy transfer in photosynthetic light harvesting involves long-lived quantum coherence among electronic excitations of pigments.
Does electronic coherence in pigment-proteins facilitate energy transfer in photosynthesis?
