Exciton coupling and excitation energy transfer are universal phenomena that govern photosynthesis in plants and bacteria and are exploited in photovoltaic devices and FRET spectroscopy. Vibrational effects play a critical role in coherent energy transfer. Thus, predictive modeling of the excitation energy transfer and electron-phonon interactions is essential for accelerating technological advances. In this talk we will discuss a recently developed vibronic model that describes vibronic couplings in multi-chromophore systems. This model can account for multiple vibrational modes, asymmetric wave functions, and inter-chromophore vibrations. Applications of this model to flexible bichromophores diphenylmethane, partially deuterated diphenylmethane and diphenylethane reveal intricate effects of asymmetry on vibronic spectra, specifically localization and delocalization of electronic and vibrational wave functions. Extensions of this methodology to modeling spectroscopy and dynamics in synthetic and natural multi-chromophore systems such as photosynthetic proteins will be also discussed.

Vibronic interactions in bi- and multi-chromophores

249th National Meeting (2015)

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