Highlights of our Work
2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001
Since Newton, vision has attracted physicists seeking to explain how light is sensed by organisms. Recently, the structure of a visual receptor protein has been solved crystallographically and physicists have a new opportunity to explain vision in atomic level detail. Vision starts with optical excitation of retinal, located in the receptor protein, and the subsequent vibrational - torsional motion in retinal's electronically excited state. Retinal reaches within less than a picosecond (0.000000000001 s) geometries for which excited state and ground state merge energetically, the so-called conical intersections. Here retinal converts back to the ground state and becomes trapped into a new stable geometry. A recent study by the Theoretical Biophysics Group explains how the conical intersections of retinal steer retinal towards the right trapped geometry, one that is capable of triggering a visual signal.