Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PU, UK.
Sci Rep. 2024 Aug 29;14(1):20094. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-66159-x.
Exciton transfer along a bio-polymer is essential for many biological processes, for instance, light harvesting in photosynthetic biosystems. Here we apply a new witness of non-classicality to this phenomenon, to conclude that, if an exciton can mediate the coherent quantum evolution of a photon, then the exciton is non-classical. We then propose a general qubit model for the quantum transfer of an exciton along a bio-polymer chain, also discussing the effects of environmental decoherence. The generality of our results makes them ideal candidates to design new tests of quantum features in complex bio-molecules.
激子在生物聚合物上的转移对于许多生物过程至关重要,例如光合作用生物系统中的光捕获。在这里,我们将一种新的非经典性见证应用于这一现象,得出结论:如果激子可以介导光子的相干量子演化,那么激子就是非经典的。然后,我们提出了一个用于激子在生物聚合物链上量子转移的通用量子位模型,还讨论了环境退相干的影响。我们的结果具有普遍性,非常适合设计在复杂生物分子中测试量子特征的新方法。