Quantum entanglement between the electron clouds of nucleic acids in DNA

TL;DR

This paper models the electron clouds in DNA nucleic acids as a chain of coupled quantum harmonic oscillators, demonstrating that entanglement persists at room temperature and exploring its implications for molecular interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a quantum harmonic oscillator model for DNA electron clouds and links entanglement measures to binding energy and correlation energy.

Findings

Nearest neighbour entanglement exists at room temperature.

Single base von Neumann entropy depends on neighboring sites.

Analytical expression for binding energy in terms of entanglement.

Abstract

We model the electron clouds of nucleic acids in DNA as a chain of coupled quantum harmonic oscillators with dipole-dipole interaction between nearest neighbours resulting in a van der Waals type bonding. Crucial parameters in our model are the distances between the acids and the coupling between them, which we estimate from numerical simulations [1]. We show that for realistic parameters nearest neighbour entanglement is present even at room temperature. We quantify the amount of entanglement in terms of negativity and single base von Neumann entropy. We find that the strength of the single base von Neumann entropy depends on the neighbouring sites, thus questioning the notion of treating single bases as logically independent units. We derive an analytical expression for the binding energy of the coupled chain in terms of entanglement and show the connection between entanglement and correlation energy, a quantity commonly used in quantum chemistry.