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Graham Fleming

Graham Fleming

Student Invited Lecture
Wed, Feb. 24, 2016, 4:30pm - 6:00pm
Frick Chemistry Laboratory, Taylor Auditorium
Host: Scholes Group

Complex Dynamics from Molecules to Membranes

Two Dimensional Electronic Spectroscopy has enabled many new insights on systems ranging from carbon nanotubes to photosynthetic light harvesting complexes. But it also is generally not well enough resolved to reveal the role and influence of nuclear degrees of freedom (vibrations) in molecular dynamics. To address this issue we developed two-dimensional electronic vibrational spectroscopy (2DEV) where the correlation of the electronic evolution with that of the nuclei is measured. I will illustrate the power of 2DEV spectroscopy with a range of examples including energy flow in LHCII, the major light harvesting complex of green plants.

Taking the kind of microscopic information described above (10s – 100s fs timescale; 1nm lengthscale) and applying it to examine the functional behavior of the thylakoid membrane of a chloroplast requires building multiscale models that should, in principle, extend the timescales up to minutes or hours and the lengthscale to microns. I will describe a multiscale model that successfully describes energy flow on the 300nm x 300nm lengthscale and 100s of ps timescale. If time permits, I will describe how introducing non-photochemical quenching into the model informs ways of analyzing fluorescence data on plants adapting to changes in light intensity.