Explores the role of quantum mechanics in biology for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in physics, biology and chemistry.

Even though time-dependent spectroscopic techniques continue to push the frontier of chemical physics, they receive scant mention in introductory courses and are poorly covered in standard texts. Quantum Dynamics: Applications in Biological and Materials Systems bridges the gap between what is traditionally taught in a one-semester quantum chemistr

This thesis focuses on theoretical analysis of the sophisticated ultrafast optical experiments that probe the crucial first few picoseconds of quantum light harvesting, making an important contribution to quantum biology, an exciting new field at the intersection of condensed matter, physical chemistry and biology. It provides new insights into the role of vibrational dynamics during singlet fission of organic pentacene thin films, and targeting the importance of vibrational dynamics in the design of nanoscale organic light harvesting devices, it also develops a new wavelet analysis technique to probe vibronic dynamics in time-resolved nonlinear optical experiments. Lastly, the thesis explores the theory of how non-linear “breather” vibrations are excited and propagate in the disordered nanostructures of photosynthetic proteins.

It is now generally agreed that a deeper understanding of biological processes requires a multi-disciplinary approach employing the tools of biology, chemistry, and physics. Such understanding involves study of biomacromolecules and their functions, which includes how they interact, their reactions, and how information is transmitted between them. This volume is devoted to quantum mechanical simulation techniques, which have developed rapidly in recent years. It covers quantum mechanical calculations of large systems, molecular dynamics combining quantum and classical algorithms, quantum dynamical simulations, and electron and proton transfer processes in proteins and in solutions.

This book, a consecutive contribution to the series Challenges and Advances in Computational Chemistry and Physics, focuses on understanding the photoinduced processes in biological systems. Understanding and fine control of light fate in molecules is vital for the progress of society and environmental safety. Light induced changes of various physico-chemical and spectroscopic properties in nucleic acids and proteins is the basis of fundamental biological events such as vision, DNA photodamage or photosensing. The investigation of these processes is challenging to both theoretical and experimental studies. This volume encompasses the quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics theory in several subfields, including: advanced computational methods for nucleic acids and proteins systems; dynamics, spectroscopic and physico-chemical properties of biological photoreceptors; DNA photodamage. This book is of interest to readers in both fundamental and application-oriented research by overviewing recent achievements in computational modeling of excited states in nucleic acids and proteins.