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The microscopic origins of terahertz (THz) vibrational modes in biologicalsystems are an active and open area of current research. Recent experiments[Physical Review X 8, 031061 (2018)] have revealed the presence of a pronouncedmode at $\sim$0.3 THz in fluorophore-decorated bovine serum albumin (BSA)protein in aqueous solution under nonequilibrium conditions induced by opticalpumping. This result was heuristically interpreted as a collective elasticfluctuation originating from the activation of a low-frequency phonon mode. Inthis work, we show that the sub-THz spectroscopic response emerges in astatistically significant manner (> 2$\sigma$) from such collective behavior,illustrating how specific THz vibrational modes can be triggered throughoptical excitations and other charge reorganization processes. We revisit thetheoretical analysis with proof-of-concept molecular dynamics that introduceoptical excitations into the simulations. Using information theory techniques,we show that these excitations can induce a multiscale response involving thetwo optically excited chromophores (tryptophans), other amino acids in theprotein, ions, and water. Our results motivate new experiments and fullynonequilibrium simulations to probe these phenomena, as well as the refinementof atomistic models of Fr\"ohlich condensates that are fundamentally determinedby nonlinear interactions in biology.

Examining the origins of observed terahertz modes from an optically pumped atomistic model protein in aqueous solution