Is sustainability of light-harvesting and waveguiding systems a quantum phenomenon?

Abstract

It is shown that sustainability is a universal quantum-statistical phenomenon, which occurs during propagation of electromagnetic waves inside different dissipative media, such as waveguides, metamaterials or biological tissues. For illustrative purposes, we show a simple yet instructive example of environment-assisted excitonic energy transfer in photobiological complexes, such as photosynthetic reaction centers or centers of melanogenesis inside living organisms or organelles. We demonstrate that this transfer must be both quantum and sustainable to simultaneously endure continuous energy transfer and keep their internal structure from destruction or critical instability. Besides, the environment-assisted evolution of a sustainable type significantly lowers the entropy and improves the speed and capacity of energy transfer. As another example, we demonstrate how this phenomenon of sustainability can manifest itself in a large class of human-controlled electromagnetic systems, such as optical couplers and amplifiers.