Abstract

There is mounting evidence that vibronic coupling and the associated quantum mechanical exchange of energy between excitonic and some vibrational motions could be at the heart of the counterintuitive long-lived coherence beating probed in Two-dimensional ultrafast spectroscopy of photosynthetic complexes. Under this hypothesis, specific quasi-coherent intramolecular vibrations influence excited-state dynamics through the formation of joint quantum states of excitonic and vibrational degrees of freedom. The exact influence such vibronic coupling on excited state dynamics is however not fully understood. In this talk I will discuss implications of coherent vibronic coupling for understanding non-trivial quantum effects during energy transfer, energy conversion and synchronisation processes in prototype light-harvesting systems as well as a quantum-optical approaches to probe the quantum coherent nature of the vibronic interactions in such systems