Circa 2004
To what extent do photosynthetic organisms use quantum mechanics to optimize the capture and distribution of light? Answers are emerging from the examination of energy transfer at the submolecular scale.
The first law of photosynthetic economics is: “A photon saved is a photon earned.” Research into the factors behind this principle has been burgeoning, and has recently culminated in a paper in Physical Review Letters by Jang et al.1 in which the authors look at photosynthetic energy transfer at the quantum level.