Vibrations, Quanta and Biology

TL;DR

This paper provides an overview of quantum biology, emphasizing the dynamics of quantum networks in biological systems and illustrating their relevance through phenomena like photosynthesis, magneto-reception, and olfaction.

Contribution

It introduces a unifying framework based on quantum dynamical networks interacting with environments, applicable to multiple biological quantum phenomena.

Findings

Quantum dynamical networks are fundamental to biological processes.

The framework applies to photosynthesis, magneto-reception, and olfaction.

Understanding these phenomena requires quantum mechanical models.

Abstract

Quantum biology is an emerging field of research that concerns itself with the experimental and theoretical exploration of non-trivial quantum phenomena in biological systems. In this tutorial overview we aim to bring out fundamental assumptions and questions in the field, identify basic design principles and develop a key underlying theme -- the dynamics of quantum dynamical networks in the presence of an environment and the fruitful interplay that the two may enter. At the hand of three biological phenomena whose understanding is held to require quantum mechanical processes, namely excitation and charge transfer in photosynthetic complexes, magneto-reception in birds and the olfactory sense, we demonstrate that this underlying theme encompasses them all, thus suggesting its wider relevance as an archetypical framework for quantum biology.