The following article is Open access

Environment-assisted quantum transport

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Published 3 March 2009 Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd
, , Citation Patrick Rebentrost et al 2009 New J. Phys. 11 033003 DOI 10.1088/1367-2630/11/3/033003

1367-2630/11/3/033003

Abstract

Transport phenomena at the nanoscale are of interest due to the presence of both quantum and classical behavior. In this work, we demonstrate that quantum transport efficiency can be enhanced by a dynamical interplay of the system Hamiltonian with pure dephasing induced by a fluctuating environment. This is in contrast to fully coherent hopping that leads to localization in disordered systems, and to highly incoherent transfer that is eventually suppressed by the quantum Zeno effect. We study these phenomena in the Fenna–Matthews–Olson protein complex as a prototype for larger photosynthetic energy transfer systems. We also show that the disordered binary tree structures exhibit enhanced transport in the presence of dephasing.

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