Quantum simulation of clustered photosynthetic light harvesting in a superconducting quantum circuit

TL;DR

This paper proposes a quantum simulation scheme using superconducting circuits to model exciton energy transfer in photosynthetic complexes, demonstrating how geometry influences efficiency and energy trapping.

Contribution

It introduces a novel superconducting circuit setup to simulate clustered photosynthetic light harvesting and explores geometric effects on energy transfer efficiency.

Findings

Moderate clustered geometry enhances EET efficiency.

Energy transfer is influenced by exciton delocalization and energy matching.

Population loss is trapped in the transmission line resonators.

Abstract

We propose a scheme to simulate the exciton energy transfer (EET) of photosynthetic complexes in a quantum superconducting circuit system. Our system is composed of two pairs of superconducting charge qubits coupled to two separated high-Q superconducting transmission line resonators (TLRs) connected by a capacitance. When the frequencies of the qubits are largely detuned with those of the TLRs, we simulate the process of the EET from the first qubit to the fourth qubit. By tuning the couplings between the qubits and the TLRs, and the coupling between the two TLRs, we can modify the effective coupling strengths between the qubits and thus demonstrate the geometric effects on the EET. It is shown that a moderate clustered geometry supports optimal EET by using exciton delocalization and energy matching condition. And the population loss during the EET has been trapped in the two TLRs.