13,604 research outputs found
Energy-dependent quenching adjusts the excitation diffusion length to regulate photosynthetic light harvesting
An important determinant of crop yields is the regulation of photosystem II
(PSII) light harvesting by energy-dependent quenching (qE). However, the
molecular details of excitation quenching have not been quantitatively
connected to the PSII yield, which only emerges on the 100 nm scale of the
grana membrane and determines flux to downstream metabolism. Here, we
incorporate excitation dissipation by qE into a pigment-scale model of
excitation transfer and trapping for a 200 nm x 200 nm patch of the grana
membrane. We demonstrate that single molecule measurements of qE are consistent
with a weak-quenching regime. Consequently, excitation transport can be
rigorously coarse-grained to a 2D random walk with an excitation diffusion
length determined by the extent of quenching. A diffusion-corrected lake model
substantially improves the PSII yield determined from variable chlorophyll
fluorescence measurements and offers an improved model of PSII for
photosynthetic metabolism.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures, 3 supplementary figure
Unimolecular reaction rates in solution and in the isolated molecule: Comparison of diphenyl butadiene nonradiative decay in solutions and supersonic jets
The recent study of diphenyl butadiene (DPB) in supersonic jets and in solution by Shepanski et al.(1) and by Courtney and Felming(2), respectively, provides an opportunity to compare the isomerization rates measured in the isolated molecule (jet) with those measured at very low viscosity in solution. These comparisons should shed light on the vibrational energy flows between āopticalā and āreactiveā modes in the isolated molecule and on the connection between activated, friction dependent, models of barrier crossing in solution,(3-5) and statistical RRK (or RRKM) theories of gas phase unimolecular reactions(6)
Coherent exciton dynamics in the presence of underdamped vibrations
Recent ultrafast optical experiments show that excitons in large biological
light-harvesting complexes are coupled to molecular vibration modes. These
high-frequency vibrations will not only affect the optical response, but also
drive the exciton transport. Here, using a model dimer system, the frequency of
the underdamped vibration is shown to have a strong effect on the exciton
dynamics such that quantum coherent oscillations in the system can be present
even in the case of strong noise. Two mechanisms are identified to be
responsible for the enhanced transport efficiency: critical damping due to the
tunable effective strength of the coupling to the bath, and resonance coupling
where the vibrational frequency coincides with the energy gap in the system.
The interplay of these two mechanisms determines parameters responsible for the
most efficient transport, and these optimal control parameters are comparable
to those in realistic light-harvesting complexes. Interestingly, oscillations
in the excitonic coherence at resonance are suppressed in comparison to the
case of an off-resonant vibration
A Mechanism for Ferrimagnetism and Incommensurability in One-Dimensional Systems
A mechanism for ferrimagnetism in
(1+1)-dimensions is discussed. The ferrimagnetism is cased by interactions
described by operators with non-zero conformal spin. Such interactions appear
in such problems as the problem of tunneling between Luttinger liquids and the
problem of frustrated spin ladder. I present exact solutions for a
representative class of models containing such interactions together with a
simple mean field analysis. It is shown that the interactions (i) dynamically
generate static oscillations with a wave vector dependent on the coupling
constant, (ii) give rise to a finite magnetic moment at accompanied by
the soft mode with a non-relativistic ({\it ferromagnetic}) dispersion , (iii) generate massive (roton) modes.Comment: replaced by the extended version, references adde
Baryonic Operators for Lattice Simulations
The construction of baryonic operators for determining the N* excitation
spectrum is discussed. The operators are designed with one eye towards
maximizing overlaps with the low-lying states of interest, and the other eye
towards minimizing the number of sources needed in computing the required quark
propagators. Issues related to spin identification are outlined. Although we
focus on tri-quark baryon operators, the construction method is applicable to
both mesons and penta-quark operators.Comment: 3 pages, poster presented at Lattice2003(spectrum), Tsukuba, Japan,
July 15-19, 200
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