Quantum dynamics of the avian compass
arXiv:1208.2558 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.90.042710
Abstract
The ability of migratory birds to orient relative to the Earth's magnetic field is believed to involve a coherent superposition of two spin states of a radical electron pair. However, the mechanism by which this coherence can be maintained in the face of strong interactions with the cellular environment has remained unclear. This Letter addresses the problem of decoherence between two electron spins due to hyperfine interaction with a bath of spin 1/2 nuclei. Dynamics of the radical pair density matrix are derived and shown to yield a simple mechanism for sensing magnetic field orientation. Rates of dephasing and decoherence are calculated ab initio and found to yield millisecond coherence times, consistent with behavioral experiments.
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Cited by in corpus (7)
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- Retrodictive derivation of the radical-ion-pair master equation and Monte-Carlo simulation with single-molecule quantum trajectories
- On the functional window of the avian compass
- Coherent chemical kinetics as quantum walks II: Radical-pair reactions in Arabidopsis thaliana
- Quantum Molecular Robots
- Dark state population determines magnetic sensitivity in radical pair magnetoreception model