Incoherent Excitation of Thermally Equilibrated Open Quantum Systems

Abstract

Under natural conditions, excitation of biological molecules, which display non-unitary open system dynamics, occurs via incoherent processes such as temperature changes or irradiation by sunlight/moonlight. The dynamics of such processes is explored analytically in a non-Markovian generic model. Specifically, a system S in equilibrium with a thermal bath TB is subjected to an external incoherent perturbation BB (such as sunlight) or another thermal bath TB', which induces time evolution in (S+TB). Particular focus is on (i) the extent to which the resultant dynamics is coherent, and (ii) the role of "stationary coherences", established in the (S+TB) equilibration, in the response to the second incoherent perturbation. Results for systems with parameters analogous to those in light harvesting molecules in photosynthesis show that the resultant dynamical behaviour is incoherent beyond a very short response to the turn-on of the perturbation.

10 pages, 8 figures. Minor changes. It matches the published version

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Does coherence enhance transport in photosynthesis?
• Computational Methodologies and Physical Insights into Electronic Energy Transfer in Photosynthetic Light-Harvesting Complexes
• Long-lived quasi-stationary coherences in V-type system driven by incoherent light
• Ground state properties of sub-Ohmic spin-boson model with simultaneous diagonal and off-diagonal coupling
• Symmetry and the critical phase of the two-bath spin-boson model: Ground-state properties
• Quantum Limit for Driven Linear Non-Markovian Open-Quantum-Systems
• Quantum Process Tomography by 2D Fluorescence Spectroscopy
• A spin-boson theory for charge photogeneration in organic molecules: Role of quantum coherence
• Long-lived oscillatory incoherent electron dynamics in molecules: trans-polyacetylene oligomers
• Light-harvesting efficiency cannot depend on optical coherence in the absence of orientational order