Vibration-induced coherence enhancement of the performance of a biological quantum heat engine

Abstract

Photosynthesis has been a long-standing research interest due to its fundamental importance. Recently, studies on photosynthesis processes also have inspired attention from a thermodynamical aspect when considering photosynthetic apparatuses as biological quantum heat engines. Quantum coherence is shown to play a crucial role in enhancing the performance of these quantum heat engines. Based on the experimentally reported structure, we propose a quantum heat engine model with a non-Markovian vibrational mode. We show that one can obtain a performance enhancement easily for a wide range of parameters in the presence of the vibrational mode. Our results provide insights into the photosynthetic processes and a design principle mimicking natural organisms.

12 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Dephasing assisted transport: Quantum networks and biomolecules
• Highly efficient energy excitation transfer in light-harvesting complexes: The fundamental role of noise-assisted transport
• The fundamental role of quantized vibrations in coherent light harvesting by cryptophyte algae
• Microscopic derivation of the Jaynes-Cummings model with cavity losses
• Impact of environmentally induced fluctuations on quantum mechanically mixed electronic and vibrational pigment states in photosynthetic energy transfer and 2D electronic spectra
• Delocalized Quantum States Enhance Photocell Efficiency

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Quantum thermodynamic devices: from theoretical proposals to experimental reality
• Thermodynamic description of non-Markovian information flux of nonequilibrium open quantum systems
• Maxwell's two-demon engine under pure dephasing noise
• Influence of the coupled-dipoles on photosynthetic performance in a photosynthetic quantum heat engine
• The role of quantum coherence in dimer and trimer excitation energy transfer
• Effects of symmetry breaking of the structurally-disordered Hamiltonian ensembles on the anisotropic decoherence of qubits
• Photovoltaic performances in a cavity-coupled double quantum dots photocell
• Charge-transport enhanced by the quantum entanglement in the Photosystem II reaction center
• Non-Markovianity in photosynthetic reaction centers: A noise-induced quantum coherence perspective
• Photovoltaic efficiency at maximum power of a quantum dot molecule
• Transient effects in quantum refrigerators with finite environments