Memory effects in single-molecule spectroscopy

From the time series of LH2 optical single-molecule fluorescence excitation spectra of Rhodospirillum molischianum the memory function of the Mori-Zwanzig equation for the optical intensity is derived numerically. We show that the time dependence of the excited states is determined by at least three different non-Markovian stochastic processes with decay constants for the Mori-Zwanzig kernel on the order of 1-5 min(-1). We suggest that this decay stems from the conformational motion of the protein scaffold of LH2. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.