Effect of Cavity lifetime in the Enhancement of the Energy Transfer in the Reduced Fenna–Matthews–Olson Complex

Strong light-matter interaction leads to the formation of hybrid polariton states and can alter the light-harvesting properties of natural photosynthetic systems without modifying their chemical structure. In the work, we computationally investigate the effect of the resonant cavity on the efficiency and the rate of the population transfer in a quantum system coupled to the cavity and the dissipative environment. The parameters of the model system were chosen to represent the Fenna–Matthews–Olson natural light-harvesting complex reduced to the three essential sites. The dynamics of the total system was propagated using the hierarchical equations of motion. Our results show that the strong light-matter interaction can accelerate the population transfer process compared to the cavity-free case but at the cost of lowering the transfer efficiency. In addition, we examine the impact of the lifetime of the cavity in the transition from weak to strong light-mater coupling and its role in the efficiency change.