Compass-free migratory navigation

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel theoretical mechanism for migratory bird navigation based on sensing geomagnetic fields through spectral peaks in a four-level quantum system, offering a new perspective on biological magnetoreception.

Contribution

It introduces a new scenario for geomagnetic sensing in birds using spectral peak separation in a quantum system, differing from existing high-sensitivity or intelligence-based models.

Findings

The spectral peak separation encodes geomagnetic information.

The mechanism explains bird disorientation by oscillating magnetic fields.

It suggests a natural quantum sensing process in migratory navigation.

Abstract

How migratory birds can find the right way in navigating over thousand miles is an intriguing question, which much interested researchers in both fields of biology and physics for centuries. There several putative proposals that sound intuitively plausible all remain contested so far because those hypothesis-models of magnetoreceptor to sense geomagnetic field need either extremely high sensitivity or humankind-like intelligence to guide. Here we explore theoretically that the birds can navigate to their destination through an entirely new scenario to sense the geomagnetic field. Our proposal is based on separate peaks of the resonance-fluorescence spectrum of a four-level system derived from the ferric sulfide cluster which exists in a protein complex (Drosophila CG8198) of migratory birds. As the separation of spectral peaks contains information about geomagnetic field at both current location and birthland, the change of such separation cues the bird to choose a right direction to move and double-resonance emerges once arrived the destination. Our theoretical mechanism can explain previous experiments on the disorientation of migratory birds caused by oscillating magnetic field naturally and more precisely. This work provides insight to explain migratory navigation and motivates possible manmade practical devices.