Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:0807.4902 · New Journal of Physics

Dephasing-assisted transport: quantum networks and biomolecules

Martin Bodo Plenio, S F Huelga

Published Nov 14, 2008• 1,002 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Transport phenomena are fundamental in physics. They allow for information and energy to be exchanged between individual constituents of communication systems, networks or even biological entities. Environmental noise will generally hinder the efficiency of the transport process. However, and contrary to intuition, there are situations in classical systems where thermal fluctuations are actually instrumental in assisting transport phenomena. Here we show that, even at zero temperature, transport of excitations across dissipative quantum networks can be enhanced by local dephasing noise. We explain the underlying physical mechanisms behind this phenomenon and propose possible experimental demonstrations in quantum optics. Our results suggest that the presence of entanglement does not play an essential role for energy transport and may even hinder it. We argue that Nature may be routinely exploiting dephasing noise and show that the transport of excitations in simplified models of light harvesting molecules does benefit from such noise assisted processes. These results point toward the possibility for designing optimized structures for transport, for example in artificial nanostructures, assisted by noise.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/10/11/113019

Related papers

Simulation of noise-assisted transport via optical cavity networks

Filippo Caruso, Nicolò Spagnolo, Chiara Vitelli +2 more

Recently, the presence of noise has been found to play a key role in assisting the transport of energy and information in complex quantum networks and even in biomolecular systems. Here we propose an experimentally realizable optical network scheme for the demonstration of the basic mechanisms underlying noise-assisted transport. The proposed system consists of a network of coupled quantum-optical cavities, injected with a single photon, whose transmission efficiency can be measured. Introducing dephasing in the photon path, this system exhibits a characteristic enhancement of the transport efficiency that can be observed with presently available technology.

arXiv:1008.3398•Physical Review A•Jan 11, 2011•34 citations

Entanglement Assisted Transport of Two Walkers in Noisy Quantum Networks

Maja Colautti, Filippo Caruso

Understanding the transport mechanisms and properties of complex networks is fundamental for the comprehension of a vast class of phenomena, from state transfer on a spin network to light-harvesting in photosynthetic complexes. It has been theoretically and experimentally demonstrated that noise can enhance transport when the system parameters are properly tuned, an effect known as noise-assisted transport (NAT). In this work we investigate the role of initial entanglement in the transfer efficiency of two walkers in a noisy network. By using the formalism of quantum walks, we define a range of small dephasing noise where initial site-entanglement provides transport enhancement and outperforms the NAT effect. Furthermore, we show two specific scenarios where entanglement-assisted transport can open faster channels for slow walkers and avoid a broken link in a communication line. These findings may be of potential interest for quantum technologies.

Italian Quantum Information Science Conference (IQIS)•Oct 25, 2019•1 citation

Environmental engineering for quantum energy transport

Chikako Uchiyama, William J. Munro, Kae Nemoto

Transport phenomena are ubiquitous throughout the science, engineering and technology disciplines as it concerns energy, mass, charge and information exchange between systems.In particular, energy transport in the nanoscale regime has attracted significant attention within the physical science community due to its potential to explain complex phenomena like the electronic energy transfer in molecular crystals or the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) / light harvesting complexes in photosynthetic bacteria with long time coherences.Energy transport in these systems is highly affected by environmental noise but surprisingly not always in a detrimental way.It was recently found that situations exist where noise actually enhances the transport phenomena.Such noise can take many forms, but can be characterised in three basic behaviours: quantum, correlation in time, or space.All have been shown potential to offer an energy transport enhancement.The focus of this work is on quantum transport caused by stochastic environment with spatio-temporal correlation.We consider a multi-site nearest neighbour interaction model with pure dephasing environmental noise with spatio-temporal correlation and show how an accelerated rate for the energy transfer results especially under negative spatial correlation (anti-correlation).Spatial anti-correlation provides another control parameter to help one establish the most efficient transfer of energy and may provide new insights into the working of exciton transport in photosynthetic complexes.Further the usage of spatio-temporal correlated noise may be a beneficial resource for efficient transport in large scale quantum networks.

International Conference on Solid State Devices and Materials (SSDM)•Sep 13, 2018•0 citations

Environmental engineering for quantum energy transport

Chikako Uchiyama, William J. Munro, Kae Nemoto

Abstract Transport phenomena are ubiquitous throughout the science, engineering, and technology disciplines as it concerns energy, mass, charge, and information exchange between systems. In particular, energy transport in the nanoscale regime has attracted significant attention within the physical science community due to its potential to explain complex phenomena like the electronic energy transfer in molecular crystals or the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO)/light harvesting complexes in photosynthetic bacteria with long time coherences. Energy transport in these systems is highly affected by environmental noise but surprisingly not always in a detrimental way. It was recently found that situations exist where noise actually enhances the transport phenomena. Such noise can take many forms, but can be characterised in three basic behaviors: quantum, correlation in time, or space. All have been shown potential to offer an energy transport enhancement. The focus of this work is on quantum transport caused by stochastic environment with spatio-temporal correlation. We consider a multi-site nearest neighbor interaction model with pure dephasing environmental noise with spatio-temporal correlation and show how an accelerated rate for the energy transfer results especially under negative spatial correlation (anti-correlation). Spatial anti-correlation provides another control parameter to help one establish the most efficient transfer of energy and may provide new insights into the working of exciton transport in photosynthetic complexes. Further the usage of spatio-temporal correlated noise may be a beneficial resource for efficient transport in large scale quantum networks.

arXiv:1711.01025•npj Quantum Information•Jul 18, 2018•30 citations

Driving the Dephasing Assisted Quantum Transport

Donny Dwiputra, Albertus Sulaiman, Jusak Sali Kosasih +2 more

Abstract Nontrivial quantum effects in biological systems are of high interest among physicists over the past decade. They allow for information and energy to be exchanged with near-unity efficiency despite hindered by the warm, wet, and noisy environment. Several models suggests that the efficient quantum energy transport is due to the interplay between dephasing dynamics and unitary evolution of the disordered biological systems i.e in photosynthetic complex. However, the proposed models have not yet included the driving force depicting the external perturbation used in the experiment such as laser in 2D spectroscopy involved in the detection of the exciton transfer or an artificial quantum transport experiments. Here, we resolve this issue by subjecting the dephasing assisted transport model by Plenio and Huelga [New J. Phys. 10, 11 (2012)] to a driving force. We analyze dynamical evolution of the driven system and show that further efficiency enhancement achieved by driving the transport site. We also discuss some experimental realizations of the quantum transport system.

Journal of Physics Conference Series•Aug 1, 2019•4 citations

Dephasing enhanced transport of spin excitations in a two dimensional lossy lattice

Andrei Skalkin, Razmik G. Unanyan, Michael Fleischhauer

Noise is commonly regarded as an adverse effect disrupting communication and coherent transport processes or limiting their efficiency. However, as has been shown for example for small light-harvesting protein complexes decoherence processes can play a significant role in facilitating transport processes, a phenomenon termed environment-assisted quantum transport (ENAQT). We here study numerically and analytically how dephasing noise improves the efficiency of spin excitation transport in a two dimensional lattice with small homogeneous losses. In particular we investigate the efficiency and time of excitation transfer from a random initial site to a specific target site and show that for system sizes below a characteristic scale it can be substantially enhanced by adding small dephasing noise. We derive approximate analytic expressions for the efficiency which become rather accurate in the two limits of small (coherent regime) and large noise (Zeno regime) and give a very good overall estimate. These analytic expressions provide a quantitative description of ENAQT in spatially extended systems and allow to derive conditions for its existence.

arXiv:2502.10854•Feb 15, 2025•0 citations
Transport phenomena are fundamental in physics. They allow for information and energy to be exchanged between individual constituents of communication systems, networks or even biological entities. Environmental noise will generally hinder the efficiency of the transport process. However, and contrary to intuition, there are situations in classical systems where thermal fluctuations are actually instrumental in assisting transport phenomena. Here we show that, even at zero temperature, transport of excitations across dissipative quantum networks can be enhanced by local dephasing noise. We explain the underlying physical mechanisms behind this phenomenon and propose possible experimental demonstrations in quantum optics. Our results suggest that the presence of entanglement does not play an essential role for energy transport and may even hinder it. We argue that Nature may be routinely exploiting dephasing noise and show that the transport of excitations in simplified models of light harvesting molecules does benefit from such noise assisted processes. These results point toward the possibility for designing optimized structures for transport, for example in artificial nanostructures, assisted by noise.
Recently, the presence of noise has been found to play a key role in assisting the transport of energy and information in complex quantum networks and even in biomolecular systems. Here we propose an experimentally realizable optical network scheme for the demonstration of the basic mechanisms underlying noise-assisted transport. The proposed system consists of a network of coupled quantum-optical cavities, injected with a single photon, whose transmission efficiency can be measured. Introducing dephasing in the photon path, this system exhibits a characteristic enhancement of the transport efficiency that can be observed with presently available technology.
Understanding the transport mechanisms and properties of complex networks is fundamental for the comprehension of a vast class of phenomena, from state transfer on a spin network to light-harvesting in photosynthetic complexes. It has been theoretically and experimentally demonstrated that noise can enhance transport when the system parameters are properly tuned, an effect known as noise-assisted transport (NAT). In this work we investigate the role of initial entanglement in the transfer efficiency of two walkers in a noisy network. By using the formalism of quantum walks, we define a range of small dephasing noise where initial site-entanglement provides transport enhancement and outperforms the NAT effect. Furthermore, we show two specific scenarios where entanglement-assisted transport can open faster channels for slow walkers and avoid a broken link in a communication line. These findings may be of potential interest for quantum technologies.
Transport phenomena are ubiquitous throughout the science, engineering and technology disciplines as it concerns energy, mass, charge and information exchange between systems.In particular, energy transport in the nanoscale regime has attracted significant attention within the physical science community due to its potential to explain complex phenomena like the electronic energy transfer in molecular crystals or the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) / light harvesting complexes in photosynthetic bacteria with long time coherences.Energy transport in these systems is highly affected by environmental noise but surprisingly not always in a detrimental way.It was recently found that situations exist where noise actually enhances the transport phenomena.Such noise can take many forms, but can be characterised in three basic behaviours: quantum, correlation in time, or space.All have been shown potential to offer an energy transport enhancement.The focus of this work is on quantum transport caused by stochastic environment with spatio-temporal correlation.We consider a multi-site nearest neighbour interaction model with pure dephasing environmental noise with spatio-temporal correlation and show how an accelerated rate for the energy transfer results especially under negative spatial correlation (anti-correlation).Spatial anti-correlation provides another control parameter to help one establish the most efficient transfer of energy and may provide new insights into the working of exciton transport in photosynthetic complexes.Further the usage of spatio-temporal correlated noise may be a beneficial resource for efficient transport in large scale quantum networks.
Abstract Transport phenomena are ubiquitous throughout the science, engineering, and technology disciplines as it concerns energy, mass, charge, and information exchange between systems. In particular, energy transport in the nanoscale regime has attracted significant attention within the physical science community due to its potential to explain complex phenomena like the electronic energy transfer in molecular crystals or the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO)/light harvesting complexes in photosynthetic bacteria with long time coherences. Energy transport in these systems is highly affected by environmental noise but surprisingly not always in a detrimental way. It was recently found that situations exist where noise actually enhances the transport phenomena. Such noise can take many forms, but can be characterised in three basic behaviors: quantum, correlation in time, or space. All have been shown potential to offer an energy transport enhancement. The focus of this work is on quantum transport caused by stochastic environment with spatio-temporal correlation. We consider a multi-site nearest neighbor interaction model with pure dephasing environmental noise with spatio-temporal correlation and show how an accelerated rate for the energy transfer results especially under negative spatial correlation (anti-correlation). Spatial anti-correlation provides another control parameter to help one establish the most efficient transfer of energy and may provide new insights into the working of exciton transport in photosynthetic complexes. Further the usage of spatio-temporal correlated noise may be a beneficial resource for efficient transport in large scale quantum networks.
Abstract Nontrivial quantum effects in biological systems are of high interest among physicists over the past decade. They allow for information and energy to be exchanged with near-unity efficiency despite hindered by the warm, wet, and noisy environment. Several models suggests that the efficient quantum energy transport is due to the interplay between dephasing dynamics and unitary evolution of the disordered biological systems i.e in photosynthetic complex. However, the proposed models have not yet included the driving force depicting the external perturbation used in the experiment such as laser in 2D spectroscopy involved in the detection of the exciton transfer or an artificial quantum transport experiments. Here, we resolve this issue by subjecting the dephasing assisted transport model by Plenio and Huelga [New J. Phys. 10, 11 (2012)] to a driving force. We analyze dynamical evolution of the driven system and show that further efficiency enhancement achieved by driving the transport site. We also discuss some experimental realizations of the quantum transport system.
Noise is commonly regarded as an adverse effect disrupting communication and coherent transport processes or limiting their efficiency. However, as has been shown for example for small light-harvesting protein complexes decoherence processes can play a significant role in facilitating transport processes, a phenomenon termed environment-assisted quantum transport (ENAQT). We here study numerically and analytically how dephasing noise improves the efficiency of spin excitation transport in a two dimensional lattice with small homogeneous losses. In particular we investigate the efficiency and time of excitation transfer from a random initial site to a specific target site and show that for system sizes below a characteristic scale it can be substantially enhanced by adding small dephasing noise. We derive approximate analytic expressions for the efficiency which become rather accurate in the two limits of small (coherent regime) and large noise (Zeno regime) and give a very good overall estimate. These analytic expressions provide a quantitative description of ENAQT in spatially extended systems and allow to derive conditions for its existence.