Vibration-enhanced quantum transport

TL;DR

This paper investigates how collective vibrational motions can enhance electronic energy transfer in quantum systems, demonstrating that driven nanomechanical resonators can improve transport efficiency and preserve phase information, with potential applications in quantum information.

Contribution

The study introduces a simple model showing vibrational enhancement of quantum transport in coupled quantum dots, highlighting the role of disorder and phase retention in solid-state systems.

Findings

Vibrational modulation can enhance excitation transport in quantum networks.

Disorder in on-site energies is crucial for transport enhancement.

Phase information is partially preserved during transfer, enabling quantum information applications.

Abstract

In this paper, we study the role of collective vibrational motion in the phenomenon of electronic energy transfer (EET) along a chain of coupled electronic dipoles with varying excitation frequencies. Previous experimental work on EET in conjugated polymer samples has suggested that the common structural framework of the macromolecule introduces correlations in the energy gap fluctuations which cause coherent EET. Inspired by these results, we present a simple model in which a driven nanomechanical resonator mode modulates the excitation energy of coupled quantum dots and find that this can indeed lead to an enhancement in the transport of excitations across the quantum network. Disorder of the on-site energies is a key requirement for this to occur. We also show that in this solid state system phase information is partially retained in the transfer process, as experimentally demonstrated in conjugated polymer samples. Consequently, this mechanism of vibration enhanced quantum transport might find applications in quantum information transfer of qubit states or entanglement.