Many-Body Models for Chirality-Induced Spin Selectivity in Electron Transfer

TL;DR

This paper introduces a microscopic many-body model for the chirality-induced spin selectivity effect in electron transfer, highlighting the roles of electron correlations and vibrational interactions in generating spin polarization.

Contribution

It provides the first explicit microscopic model including internal degrees of freedom and many-body states to explain the CISS effect in electron transfer.

Findings

Strong electron-electron correlations are crucial for polarization.

Coherent and incoherent vibrational interactions influence long-term spin polarization.

Exact solutions on short chiral chains demonstrate the model's effectiveness.

Abstract

We present the first microscopic model for chirality-induced spin selectivity effect in electron-transfer, in which the internal degrees of freedom of the chiral bridge are explicitly included. By exactly solving this model on short chiral chains we demonstrate that a sizable polarization on the acceptor arises from the interplay of coherent and incoherent dynamics, with strong electron-electron correlations yielding many-body states on the bridge as crucial ingredients. Moreover, we include the coherent and incoherent interactions with vibrational modes and show that they can play an important role in determining the long-time polarized state probed in experiments.