2017/07/31 by Marcin Płodzień, Tomasz Sowiński, Servaas Kokkelmans
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Physical and Chemical Molecular Interactions #Ansatz #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Polaron #Quantum #Quantum many-body systems #Quantum simulator #Range (aeronautics) #Rydberg atom #Rydberg formula #Ultracold atom #cond-mat.quant-gas #nlin.PS #physics.atom-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41598-018-27232-4
published as Sci. Rep. 8, 9247 (2018)
openalex created_date 2017/07/21 · openalex publication_date 2018/06/12 · arxiv created 2018/06/21 · arxiv updated 2018/06/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Transport of excitations along proteins can be formulated in a quantum physics context, based on the periodicity and vibrational modes of the structures. Numerically exact solutions of the corresponding equations are very challenging to obtain on classical computers. Approximate solutions based on the Davydov ansatz have demonstrated the possibility of stabilized solitonic excitations along the protein, however, experimentally these solutions have never been directly observed. Here we propose an alternative study of biophysical transport phenomena based on a quantum simulator composed of a chain of ultracold dressed Rydberg atoms, which allows for a direct observation of the Davydov phenomena. We show that there is an experimentally accessible range of parameters where the system directly mimics the Davydov equations and their solutions. Moreover, we show that such a quantum simulator has access to the regime in between the small and large polaron regimes, which cannot be described perturbatively.