Survival Probabilities in Coherent Exciton Transfer with Trapping

TL;DR

This paper investigates how quantum coherence affects exciton trapping and survival probabilities, revealing power-law decay in contrast to exponential decay in classical models, and proposes an experimental protocol to distinguish these mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a quantum walk framework for exciton trapping, analyzing survival probabilities and proposing an experimental method to differentiate coherent from incoherent transport.

Findings

Survival probability exhibits power-law decay in quantum systems.

Different spectral regions correspond to distinct decay behaviors.

Proposed experimental protocol can distinguish coherent from incoherent transport.

Abstract

In the quest for signatures of coherent transport we consider exciton trapping in the continuous-time quantum walk framework. The survival probability displays different decay domains, related to distinct regions of the spectrum of the Hamiltonian. For linear systems and at intermediate times the decay obeys a power-law, in contrast to the corresponding exponential decay found in incoherent continuous-time random walk situations. To differentiate between the coherent and incoherent mechanisms, we present an experimental protocol based on a frozen Rydberg gas structured by optical dipole traps.