Professor Matt Johnson has been awarded a major new joint NSF-BBSRC grant to investigate quantum effects in photosynthesis with collaborator Professor Gabriela Schlau-Cohen from MIT in Boston, USA.
Describing the project Matt said "Photosynthetic light harvesting powers most life on Earth. A large network of pigment-containing proteins captures and transports solar energy to a reaction centre where it is converted into chemical energy. Solar energy transfer occurs in natural light harvesting systems with a quantum efficiency higher than that predicted by a classical random walk. Strong couplings between the pigments may give rise to high efficiency coherent wavelike transfer of excitation, a quantum phenomena. Yet, current models predict that interactions between the pigments and the surrounding protein disrupt coherent transport by introducing ‘hills’ and ‘valleys’ in the energetic landscape, leading to energetic traps. In this project we will investigate natural and novel synthetic light harvesting architectures with ultrafast spectroscopic techniques to understand the prevalence and purpose of non-trivial quantum effects in photosynthesis."