Shaping excitons in light-harvesting proteins through nanoplasmonics

Nanoplasmonics has been used to enhance molecular spectroscopic signals, with exquisite spatial resolution down to the sub-molecular scale. By means of a rigorous, state-of-the-art multiscale model based on a quantum chemical description, here we show that optimally tuned tip-shaped metal nanoparticles can selectively excite localized regions of typically coherent systems, eventually narrowing down to probing one single pigment. The well-known major light-harvesting complex LH2 of purple bacteria has been investigated because of its unique properties, as it presents both high and weak delocalization among subclusters of pigments. This finding opens the way to the direct spectroscopic investigation of quantum-based processes, such as the quantum diffusion of the excitation among the chromophores, and their external manipulation.