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Topology and energy transport in networks of interacting photosynthetic complexes
We address the role of topology in the energy transport process that occurs
in networks of photosynthetic complexes. We take inspiration from light
harvesting networks present in purple bacteria and simulate an incoherent
dissipative energy transport process on more general and abstract networks,
considering both regular structures (Cayley trees and hyperbranched fractals)
and randomly-generated ones. We focus on the the two primary light harvesting
complexes of purple bacteria, i.e., the LH1 and LH2, and we use
network-theoretical centrality measures in order to select different LH1
arrangements. We show that different choices cause significant differences in
the transport efficiencies, and that for regular networks centrality measures
allow to identify arrangements that ensure transport efficiencies which are
better than those obtained with a random disposition of the complexes. The
optimal arrangements strongly depend on the dissipative nature of the dynamics
and on the topological properties of the networks considered, and depending on
the latter they are achieved by using global vs. local centrality measures. For
randomly-generated networks a random arrangement of the complexes already
provides efficient transport, and this suggests the process is strong with
respect to limited amount of control in the structure design and to the
disorder inherent in the construction of randomly-assembled structures.
Finally, we compare the networks considered with the real biological networks
and find that the latter have in general better performances, due to their
higher connectivity, but the former with optimal arrangements can mimic the
real networks' behaviour for a specific range of transport parameters. These
results show that the use of network-theoretical concepts can be crucial for
the characterization and design of efficient artificial energy transport
networks.Comment: 14 pages, 16 figures, revised versio
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