Energy transfer and correlations in cavity-embedded donor-acceptor configurations

TL;DR

This paper investigates how cavity-mediated interactions influence energy transfer and quantum correlations in donor-acceptor systems, revealing modifications to traditional transfer scaling and identifying optimal energy flow conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified model analyzing the interplay of near-field and cavity-mediated interactions, highlighting the impact on energy transfer scaling and quantum entanglement.

Findings

Free-space collective interactions modify energy transfer scaling.

Cavity-mediated interactions can enhance or suppress transfer in different regimes.

Optimal energy flow occurs at equal donor/acceptor polariton contributions.

Abstract

The rate of energy transfer in donor-acceptor systems can be manipulated via the common interaction with the confined electromagnetic modes of a micro-cavity. We analyze the competition between the near-field short range dipole-dipole energy exchange processes and the cavity mediated long-range interactions in a simplified model consisting of effective two-level quantum emitters that could be relevant for molecules in experiments under cryogenic conditions. We find that free-space collective incoherent interactions, typically associated with sub- and superradiance, can modify the traditional resonant energy transfer scaling with distance. The same holds true for cavity-mediated collective incoherent interactions in a weak-coupling but strong-cooperativity regime. In the strong coupling regime, we elucidate the effect of pumping into cavity polaritons and analytically identify an optimal energy flow regime characterized by equal donor/acceptor Hopfield coefficients in the middle polariton. Finally we quantify the build-up of quantum correlations in the donor-acceptor system via the two-qubit concurrence as a measure of entanglement.