Excitons in ternary mixed molecular crystals: A prototype for the primary step of photosynthesis?

Abstract

Exciton percolation, which has been demonstrated in synthetic ternary molecular alloys, is applied to photosynthetic light harvesting complexes. The resulting model ("substitutionally random") results in a predicted pigment A/B ratio larger than one, where A represents the lowest energy pigment species and B the higher substitutional ones (i.e. chl a/chl b in plants). An additional criterion is given for the nature of the reaction center (i.e. P700), based on phonon amalgamation with species A (i.e. structural similarity).