Decoherence in the chemical compass: The role of decoherence for avian magnetoreception

Abstract

Contrary to the usual picture that decoherence destroys quantum properties and causes the quantum-to-classical transition, we argue that decoherence can also play a constructive role in driving quantum dynamics and amplifying its results to macroscopic scales. We support this perspective by presenting an example system from spin chemistry, which is also of importance for biological systems, e.g. in avian magnetoreception.

25 pages; Contribution to a special theme issue on Decoherence in Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A, edited by Amit Hagar; published version, typos corrected

References in corpus (3)

• Spin-selective reactions of radical pairs act as quantum measurements
• Reaction operators for spin-selective chemical reactions of radical pairs
• Open Quantum System Approach to the Modeling of Spin Recombination Reactions

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Hamiltonian Simulation of Quantum Beats in Radical Pairs Undergoing Thermal Relaxation on Near-term Quantum Computers
• Observations about utilitarian coherence in the avian compass
• Quantum Information Processing in the Radical-Pair Mechanism: Haberkorn theory violates the Ozawa entropy bound
• Lasting effects of static magnetic field on classical Brownian motion
• Non-equilibrium, weak-field induced magnetism: a mechanism for magnetobiology
• Engineering the uncontrollable: Steering noisy spin-correlated radical-pairs with coherent and incoherent control