  Electronic energy transfer in the condensed phase, such as that occurring in
photosynthetic complexes, frequently occurs in regimes where the energy scales
of the system and environment are similar. This situation provides a challenge
to theoretical investigation since most approaches are accurate only when a
certain energetic parameter is small compared to others in the problem. Here we
show that in these difficult regimes, the Ehrenfest approach provides a good
starting point for a dynamical description of the energy transfer process due
to its ability to accurately treat coupling to slow environmental modes. To
further improve on the accuracy of the Ehrenfest approach, we use our reduced
density matrix hybrid framework to treat the faster environmental modes quantum
mechanically, at the level of a perturbative master equation. This combined
approach is shown to provide an efficient and quantitative description of
electronic energy transfer in a model dimer and the Fenna-Matthews-Olson
complex and is used to investigate the effect of environmental preparation on
the resulting dynamics.
