2-D Optical spectroscopy of photosynthetic light harvesting complexes

PHYS 22

Gregory S. Engel, gsengel@uchicago.edu, Department of Chemistry, University of Chicago, 929 East 57th Street, GCIS E119, Chicago, IL 60637
Two dimensional electronic spectroscopy provides detailed information about electronic structure and electronic dynamics on ultrafast timescales. Probing chromophores embedded within photosynthetic complexes with this technique, we are able to observe the underlying design principles that drive photosynthesis. In particular we see strong evidence for long-lived coherences after excitation and coherence transfer as well as population transfer. New techniques leveraging novel polarization schemes to isolate individual response pathways will be presented along with further evidence for bottleneck states in LHC II complexes.