Noise-assisted transport in biological quantum networks

Description
Transport phenomena in complex networks play an important role in many areas of physics, chemistry, and biology. Environmental noise does usually deteriorate the performance of these systems. Here we identify two key mechanisms through which dephasing noise, contrary to expectation, may actually aid transport of excitations through dissipative quantum networks by opening additional pathways. We investigate numerically and analytically noisy transport dynamics on a fully connected network and study numerically the Fenna-Matthew-Olson (FMO) complex, the former to elucidate the fundamental principles, and the latter to show how these principles can explain the remarkable efficiency (99%) and robustness (against static disorder) of excitation energy transfer from the light-harvesting chlorosomes to the bacterial reaction center in biological photosynthetic complexes. These results strongly suggest the possibility for achieving robust and efficient information/energy transfer, assisted by noise, by designing optimized artificial nano-structures for transport, for instance, in solar cells and in quantum information processing.
Organised by Dr. Filippo Caruso