Communication: Exciton–phonon information flow in the energy transfer process of photosynthetic complexes

Abstract

Non-Markovian and nonequilibrium phonon effects are believed to be key ingredients in the energy transfer in photosynthetic complexes, especially in complexes which exhibit a regime of intermediate exciton–phonon coupling. In this work, we utilize a recently developed measure for non-Markovianity to elucidate the exciton–phonon dynamics in terms of the information flow between electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom. We study the measure in the hierarchical equation of motion approach which captures strong coupling effects and nonequilibrium molecular reorganization. We propose an additional trace distance measure for the information flow that could be extended to other master equations. We find that for a model dimer system and for the Fenna–Matthews–Olson complex the non-Markovianity is significant under physiological conditions.