Studying light-harvesting models with superconducting circuits

Potocnik A, Bargerbos A, Schroder FAYN, Khan SA, Collodo MC, Gasparinetti S, Salathe Y, Creatore C, Eichler C, Tureci HE, Chin AW, Wallraff A (2018)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2018

Journal

Nature Communications Nature Publishing Group: Nature Communications

Book Volume: 9

Article Number: 904

Journal Issue: 1

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-03312-x

Abstract

The process of photosynthesis, the main source of energy in the living world, converts sunlight into chemical energy. The high efficiency of this process is believed to be enabled by an interplay between the quantum nature of molecular structures in photosynthetic complexes and their interaction with the environment. Investigating these effects in biological samples is challenging due to their complex and disordered structure. Here we experimentally demonstrate a technique for studying photosynthetic models based on superconducting quantum circuits, which complements existing experimental, theoretical, and computational approaches. We demonstrate a high degree of freedom in design and experimental control of our approach based on a simplified three-site model of a pigment protein complex with realistic parameters scaled down in energy by a factor of 105. We show that the excitation transport between quantum-coherent sites disordered in energy can be enabled through the interaction with environmental noise. We also show that the efficiency of the process is maximized for structured noise resembling intramolecular phononic environments found in photosynthetic complexes.

Authors with CRIS profile

Christopher Eichler

Involved external institutions

Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ) / Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich CH Switzerland (CH) University of Cambridge GB United Kingdom (GB) Princeton University US United States (USA) (US)

How to cite

APA:

Potocnik, A., Bargerbos, A., Schroder, F.A.Y.N., Khan, S.A., Collodo, M.C., Gasparinetti, S.,... Wallraff, A. (2018). Studying light-harvesting models with superconducting circuits. Nature Communications, 9(1). https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03312-x

MLA:

Potocnik, Anton, et al. "Studying light-harvesting models with superconducting circuits." Nature Communications 9.1 (2018).

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