Phase directed excitonic transport and its limitations due to environmental influence

TL;DR

This paper explores how initial phase differences can direct excitonic energy transfer along a chain and examines how environmental dephasing limits this directed transport.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of phase-controlled directionality in excitonic transfer and analyzes environmental effects on this process.

Findings

Phase differences enable strong directional energy transfer.

Environmental dephasing reduces transfer directionality.

Directed transfer is sensitive to environmental noise.

Abstract

We investigate theoretically the transfer of excitation along a one dimensional chain of monomers for a situation in which initially the excitation is shared coherently by two monomers. We show that depending on the relative phase between the two monomers strong directionality of the energy transfer is possible. It is also investigated how dephasing, induced by an environment, influences this directed transport.