Theory of excitation energy transfer: from structure to function

Abstract

This mini-review summarizes our current theoretical knowledge about excitation energy transfer in pigment-protein complexes. The challenge for theory lies in the complexity of these systems and in the fact that the pigment-pigment and the pigment-protein interactions are of equal magnitude. The first part of this review contains an introduction to the theory of light harvesting and to structure- based calculations of the parameters of the theory. The second part provides a discussion of the standard Förster and Redfield theories of excitation energy transfer, which are valid in the limit of weak and strong pigment-pigment coupling, respectively. Afterward, we provide a description of recent extensions of the standard theories and discuss challenging problems to be solved in the future.