Crucial effect of transverse vibrations on the transport through polymer chains.

The low temperature transport of electron, or vibrational or electronic exciton toward polymer chains, turns out to be dramatically sensitive to its interaction with transverse acoustic vibrations. We show that this interaction leads to a substantial polaron effect and decoherence, which are generally stronger than those associated with longitudinal vibrations. For site-dependent interactions, transverse phonons form subohmic bath leading to the quantum phase transition accompanied by full suppression of the transport at zero temperature and fast decoherence characterized by temperature dependent rate k ∝ T at low temperature, while k ∝ T for site-independent interactions. The latter dependence was used to interpret recent measurements of temperature dependent vibrational energy transport in polyethylene glycol oligomers.