Physics – Quantum Physics
Scientific paper
2009-05-23
Nature Physics, 6, 462 (2010)
Physics
Quantum Physics
14 pages, 7 figures. Improved presentation, published version
Scientific paper
Light harvesting components of photosynthetic organisms are complex, coupled, many-body quantum systems, in which electronic coherence has recently been shown to survive for relatively long time scales despite the decohering effects of their environments. Within this context, we analyze entanglement in multi-chromophoric light harvesting complexes, and establish methods for quantification of entanglement by presenting necessary and sufficient conditions for entanglement and by deriving a measure of global entanglement. These methods are then applied to the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) protein to extract the initial state and temperature dependencies of entanglement. We show that while FMO in natural conditions largely contains bipartite entanglement between dimerized chromophores, a small amount of long-range and multipartite entanglement exists even at physiological temperatures. This constitutes the first rigorous quantification of entanglement in a biological system. Finally, we discuss the practical utilization of entanglement in densely packed molecular aggregates such as light harvesting complexes.
Fleming Graham R.
Ishizaki Akihito
Sarovar Mohan
Whaley Birgitta K.
No associations
LandOfFree
Quantum entanglement in photosynthetic light harvesting complexes does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Quantum entanglement in photosynthetic light harvesting complexes, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Quantum entanglement in photosynthetic light harvesting complexes will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-499432