Authors
Ingrid G Prandi, Lucas Viani, Oliviero Andreussi, Benedetta Mennucci
Publication date
2016/4/30
Journal
Journal of computational chemistry
Volume
37
Issue
11
Pages
981-991
Description
Carotenoids are important actors both in light‐harvesting (LH) and in photoprotection functions of photosynthetic pigment–protein complexes. A deep theoretical investigation of this multiple role is still missing owing to the difficulty of describing the delicate interplay between electronic and nuclear degrees of freedom. A possible strategy is to combine accurate quantum mechanical (QM) methods with classical molecular dynamics. To do this, however, accurate force–fields (FF) are necessary. This article presents a new FF for the different carotenoids present in LH complexes of plants. The results show that all the important structural properties described by the new FF are in very good agreement with QM reference values. This increased accuracy in the simulation of the structural fluctuations is also reflected in the description of excited states. Both the energy order and the different nature of the lowest singlet states …
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