Abstract
Carotenoids are a widespread class of natural pigments with a number of important functions in biological systems In their light-harvesting role, carotenoids absorb light in the blue-green region and transfer energy to the bacterio-chlorophyll with efficiency close to 1 The most representative and extensively investigated carotenoid is β-carotene, a linear conjugated systems with 11 double bonds p-carotene is also a model compound for the class of non-luminescent conjugated polymers, because the lowest excited state (S1) is of even parity, i e optically forbidden Recent theoretical modeling based on the Coulomb mechanism, has successfully accounted for the ultrafast energy transfer from the odd parity S2 state of carotenoids to the Qy state in bacterio-chlorophyll [1] This process however concerns only a fraction of the whole transferred energy The remaining part is transferred from the Si state through a complex mechanism not yet understood, which may involve hot vibrational states New experiments with unprecedent time resolution may thus be helpful in investigating this fundamental issue
© 2000 IEEE
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