Temporal witnesses of non-classicality in a macroscopic biological system

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method to detect non-classicality in biological systems by analyzing exciton transfer in polymers, demonstrating potential quantum effects in complex biomolecules.

Contribution

It proposes a novel witness of non-classicality for biological exciton transfer and a general qubit model including environmental effects.

Findings

Exciton transfer can exhibit non-classical behavior if it mediates coherent quantum evolution.

The proposed model accounts for environmental decoherence effects.

Results suggest new ways to test quantum features in biological molecules.

Abstract

Exciton transfer along a polymer is essential for many biological processes, for instance light harvesting in photosynthetic biosystems. Here we apply a new witness of non-classicality to this phenomenon, to conclude that, if an exciton can mediate the coherent quantum evolution of a photon, then the exciton is non-classical. We then propose a general qubit model for the quantum transfer of an exciton along a polymer chain, also discussing the effects of environmental decoherence. The generality of our results makes them ideal candidates to design new tests of quantum features in complex bio-molecules.