2011/01/25 by Lorenzo Campos Venuti, Paolo Zanardi · 11 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Chemistry · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Artificial intelligence #Biological system #Biology #Chemical physics #Chemistry #Computer science #Energy (signal processing) #Energy transfer #Energy transport #Engineering physics #Excitation #Mathematics #Photochemistry and Electron Transfer Studies #Photosynthesis #Photosynthetic Processes and Mechanisms #Photosynthetic reaction centre #Physics #Quantum #Quantum mechanics #Relevance (law) #Simple (philosophy) #Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies #Statistical physics #Topology (electrical circuits) #Unitarity #Variety (cybernetics) #physics.bio-ph #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.84.134206
published in Physical Review B 84(13) (American Physical Society) · 10 pages, 11 figures
arxiv created 2011/01/25 · openalex publication_date 2011/10/19 · arxiv updated 2015/03/18 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
A variety of open quantum networks are currently under intense examination to model energy transport in photosynthetic systems. Here, we study the coherent transfer of a quantum excitation over a network incoherently coupled with a structured and small environment that effectively models the photosynthetic reaction center. Our goal is to distill a few basic, possibly universal, mechanisms or effects that are featured in simple energy-transfer models. In particular, we identify three different phenomena: the congestion effect, the asymptotic unitarity, and the staircase effects. We begin with few-site models, in which these effects can be fully understood, and then proceed to study more complex networks similar to those employed to model energy transfer in light-harvesting complexes.