Motional effects on the efficiency of excitation transfer

TL;DR

This paper investigates how mechanical motion influences quantum excitation transfer efficiency in molecular chains, revealing that oscillations can significantly enhance transfer through a quantum-coherent mechanism, with potential applications in natural and artificial systems.

Contribution

It demonstrates that mechanical oscillations can enhance quantum excitation transfer efficiency, highlighting a quantum signature absent in classical transfer, and proposes a control technique for optimization.

Findings

Mechanical oscillations significantly improve transfer efficiency.

Enhancement relies on quantum-coherent evolution and motion interplay.

Potential applications in biological and artificial transport systems.

Abstract

Energy transfer plays a vital role in many natural and technological processes. In this work, we study the effects of mechanical motion on the excitation transfer through a chain of interacting molecules with application to biological scenarios of transfer processes. Our investigation demonstrates that, for various types of mechanical oscillations, the transfer efficiency is significantly enhanced over that of comparable static configurations. This enhancement is a genuine quantum signature, and requires the collaborative interplay between the quantum-coherent evolution of the excitation and the mechanical motion of the molecules; it has no analogue in the classical incoherent energy transfer. This effect may not only occur naturally, but it could be exploited in artificially designed systems to optimize transport processes. As an application, we discuss a simple and hence robust control technique.