Simulating polaron biophysics with Rydberg atoms

TL;DR

This paper proposes using a chain of ultracold Rydberg atoms as a quantum simulator to model and study excitation transport in proteins, providing a new experimental approach to biophysical quantum phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a feasible parameter regime for a Rydberg atom-based quantum simulator that can emulate Davydov equations for protein excitation transport.

Findings

Identifies parameter ranges for the quantum simulator

Demonstrates potential to mimic Davydov solitons

Opens new avenues for biophysical quantum studies

Abstract

Transport of excitations along proteins can be formulated in a quantum physics context, based on the periodicity and vibrational modes of the structures. Exact solutions are very challenging to obtain on classical computers, however, approximate solutions based on the Davydov ansatz have demonstrated the possibility of stabilized solitonic excitations along the protein. We propose an alternative study based on a chain of ultracold atoms. We investigate the experimental parameters to control such a quantum simulator based on dressed Rydberg atoms. We show that there is a feasible range of parameters where a quantum simulator can directly mimic the Davydov equations and their solutions. Such a quantum simulator opens up new directions for the study of transport phenomena in a biophysical context.