Renormalization-group results of electron transport in DNA molecules with off-diagonal correlation

Abstract

For a DNA molecule with off-diagonal short-range correlation, which is composed of N nucleotide base pairs, we use the renormalization-group method to eliminate ( N - 2 ) sites and obtain an effective Hamiltonian on the two preserved sites. Connecting the DNA molecule to the left and right semi-infinite leads that can be described with one-dimensional tight-binding lattice, we carry out an exact calculation of the transmission of electrons and discuss the dependence of transmission coefficients on the energy eigenvalue of the whole system. The results show they are qualitatively consistent with those calculated by transfer matrix method. We see that the local correlation leads to much larger transmission coefficient, compared to those in Anderson model. Furthermore, at golden correlation condition for the hopping integrals, we find there exist much more extended states, where the transmission coefficients are equal or nearly equal to unity, than at typically local correlation.