[QIP-Sem] QIP seminar, Wed 9/3, 3:00 pm, Mallinckrodt M213 (12 Oxford st, across from science center), Alexandra Olaya-Castro

[Peter Shor]

MIT Quantum Information Processing seminar
Wednesday 9/3 at 3:00 pm in Mallinckrodt M213 (12 Oxford st, across from science center)
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Alexandra Olaya-Castro (Harvard)

Energy Transfer in a photosynthetic core complex: Exploiting quantum coherence and static disorder

Abstract:

Photosynthetic structures are finely tuned to capture solar light efficiently and transfer it to molecular reaction centres for conversion into chemical energy with 950r more efficiency. How photosynthetic structures achieve such a high-efficiency is still a long-standing question in science. Fundamental breakthroughs towards answering this question have recently been achieved. In particular, direct evidence of long-lasting electronic coherence during excitation transfer in photosynthetic complexes has been obtained. In this talk I will discuss our recent work on the energy transfer efficiency in a photosynthetic core where a light harvesting antenna is connected to a reaction centre as in purple bacteria.  By using a quantum jump approach, we demonstrate that in the presence of quantum coherent energy transfer and energetic disorder, the transfer efficiency from the antenna to the reaction centre depends intimately on the quantum superposition properties of the initial state
 . This indicates that initial state properties could be used as an efficiency control parameter. Our results open up experimental possibilities to investigate and exploit such coherent phenomena in artificial and natural systems capable of harvesting light.

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