Abstract
Transport phenomena in photosynthetic systems have attracted a great deal of attention due to their potential role in devising novel photovoltaic materials. In particular, energy transport in light-harvesting complexes is considered quite efficient due to the balance between coherent quantum evolution and decoherence, a phenomenon coined Environment-Assisted Quantum Transport (ENAQT). Although this effect has been extensively studied, its behavior is typically described in terms of the decoherence’s strength, namely weak, moderate or strong. Here, we study the ENAQT in terms of quantum correlations that go beyond entanglement. Using a subsystem of the Fenna–Matthews–Olson complex, we find that discord-like correlations maximize when the subsystem’s transport efficiency increases, while the entanglement between sites vanishes. Our results suggest that quantum discord is a manifestation of the ENAQT and highlight the importance of beyond-entanglement correlations in photosynthetic energy transport processes.
Highlights
Transport phenomena in nanostructured materials [1,2,3,4] and biomolecules [5,6,7,8,9] have been the main subject of interest in several investigations in the last two decades
In some biological systems, such as green sulfur bacteria, where the corresponding energy transport efficiency is exceptionally high, there is experimental evidence of unexpected long-time quantum coherences [12,13,14]. These observations have led to the proposal of different mechanisms through which excitonic energy transport may be enhanced. One of these is the so-called environment-assisted quantum transport or Environment-Assisted Quantum Transport (ENAQT), an effect that arises from the balance between coherent quantum evolution of a photosynthetic system and environmentally induced decoherence [15,16]
We show how quantum discord-like correlations maximize during the noise-assisted energy transport process in the single-excitation regime
Summary
Transport phenomena in nanostructured materials [1,2,3,4] and biomolecules [5,6,7,8,9] have been the main subject of interest in several investigations in the last two decades. In some biological systems, such as green sulfur bacteria, where the corresponding energy transport efficiency is exceptionally high, there is experimental evidence of unexpected long-time quantum coherences [12,13,14]. These observations have led to the proposal of different mechanisms through which excitonic energy transport may be enhanced. One of these is the so-called environment-assisted quantum transport or ENAQT, an effect that arises from the balance between coherent quantum evolution of a photosynthetic system and environmentally induced decoherence [15,16]. The role of vibrations in efficient transport of photosynthetic energy has been highlighted, giving rise to the so-called vibrationally assisted energy transfer effect [17,18]
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