Organic molecule fluorescence as an experimental test-bed for quantum jumps in thermodynamics

TL;DR

This paper uses organic molecule fluorescence as an experimental platform to test quantum thermodynamics principles, specifically demonstrating the quantum Jarzynski equality through single-molecule spectroscopy.

Contribution

It introduces organic molecules as a natural test-bed for quantum thermodynamics and experimentally verifies the quantum Jarzynski equality in this context.

Findings

Quantum Jarzynski equality holds in molecular fluorescence experiments.

Single-molecule spectroscopy can detect energy shifts beyond relative changes.

Molecules serve as effective systems for probing quantum thermodynamic laws.

Abstract

We demonstrate with an experiment how molecules are a natural test-bed for probing fundamental quantum thermodynamics. Single-molecule spectroscopy has undergone transformative change in the past decade with the advent of techniques permitting individual molecules to be distinguished and probed. By considering the time-resolved emission spectrum of organic molecules as arising from quantum jumps between states, we demonstrate that the quantum Jarzynski equality is satisfied in this set-up. This relates the heat dissipated into the environment to the free energy difference between the initial and final state. We demonstrate also how utilizing the quantum Jarzynski equality allows for the detection of energy shifts within a molecule, beyond the relative shift.