Environment-Assisted Quantum Walks in Photosynthetic Energy Transfer

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dc.creatorMohseni, Masoud
dc.creatorRebentrost, Patrick
dc.creatorLloyd, Seth
dc.creatorAspuru-Guzik, Alán
dc.date2008-05-18
dc.date2008-10-14
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T12:09:15Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T12:09:15Z
dc.descriptionEnergy transfer within photosynthetic systems can display quantum effects such as delocalized excitonic transport. Recently, direct evidence of long-lived coherence has been experimentally demonstrated for the dynamics of the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) protein complex [Engel et al., Nature 446, 782 (2007)]. However, the relevance of quantum dynamical processes to the exciton transfer efficiency is to a large extent unknown. Here, we develop a theoretical framework for studying the role of quantum interference effects in energy transfer dynamics of molecular arrays interacting with a thermal bath within the Lindblad formalism. To this end, we generalize continuous-time quantum walks to non-unitary and temperature-dependent dynamics in Liouville space derived from a microscopic Hamiltonian. Different physical effects of coherence and decoherence processes are explored via a universal measure for the energy transfer efficiency and its susceptibility. In particular, we demonstrate that for the FMO complex an effective interplay between free Hamiltonian and thermal fluctuations in the environment leads to a substantial increase in energy transfer efficiency from about 70% to 99%.
dc.description9 pages, 3 figures, improved presentation, updated references, to appear in Journal of Chemical Physics
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/0805.2741
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/0805.2741
dc.identifierJournal of Chemical Physics 129, 174106 (2008)
dc.identifierdoi:10.1063/1.3002335
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/209562
dc.subjectQuantum Physics
dc.subjectBiological Physics
dc.subjectChemical Physics
dc.titleEnvironment-Assisted Quantum Walks in Photosynthetic Energy Transfer
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