The Effect of Duschinskii Rotations on Spin-Dependent Electron Transfer Dynamics

TL;DR

This paper explores how Duschinskii rotations influence spin-dependent electron transfer, revealing that such rotations can significantly enhance transient spin polarization, impacting models of nuclear motion in chiral spin selectivity.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of spin transfer dynamics incorporating Duschinskii rotations and demonstrates their effect on spin polarization in a two-level system.

Findings

Duschinskii rotations increase transient spin polarization.

Entangled normal modes affect electron transfer dynamics.

Implications for chiral induced spin selectivity models.

Abstract

We investigate spin-dependent electron transfer in the presence of a Duschinskii rotation. In particular, we propagate dynamics for a two-level model system for which spin-orbit coupling introduces an interstate coupling of the form $e^{iWx}$, which is both position(x)-dependent and complex-valued. We demonstrate that two-level systems coupled to Brownian oscillators with Duschinskii rotations (and thus entangled normal modes) can produce marked increases in transient spin polarization relative to two-level systems coupled to simple shifted harmonic oscillators. These conclusions should have significant relevance for modeling the effect of nuclear motion on chiral induced spin selectivity.