Disorder and dephasing as control knobs for light transport in optical fiber cavity networks

TL;DR

This paper presents an experimental optical fiber cavity network that uses disorder and dephasing noise as control knobs to optimize light transport efficiency, mimicking natural photosynthetic processes and aiding the design of efficient energy systems.

Contribution

It introduces a scalable, controllable optical fiber network platform that tunes noise parameters to enhance transport efficiency through interference control.

Findings

Disorder and dephasing can be used to optimize transport paths.

The setup mimics natural photosynthetic energy transfer.

Potential for designing efficient nanoscale energy structures.

Abstract

Transport phenomena represent a very interdisciplinary topic with applications in many fields of science, such as physics, chemistry, and biology. In this context, the possibility to design a perfectly controllable experimental setup, where to tune and optimize its dynamics parameters, is a challenging but very relevant task to emulate, for instance, the transmission of energy in light harvesting processes. Here, we experimentally build a scalable and controllable transport emulator based on optical fiber cavity networks where the system noise parameters can be finely tuned while maximizing the transfer efficiency. In particular, we demonstrate that disorder and dephasing noise are two control knobs allowing one to play with constructive and destructive interference to optimize the transport paths towards an exit site. These optical setups, on one side, mimic the transport dynamics in natural photosynthetic organisms and, on the other, are very promising platforms to artificially design optimal nanoscale structures for novel, more efficient, clean energy technologies.