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arXiv:1006.4053

Quantum entanglement between the electron clouds of nucleic acids in DNA

Elisabeth Rieper, Janet Anders, Vlatko Vedral

Published Jun 21, 2010• 33 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We model the electron clouds of nucleic acids in DNA as a chain of coupled quantum harmonic oscillators with dipole-dipole interaction between nearest neighbours resulting in a van der Waals type bonding. Crucial parameters in our model are the distances between the acids and the coupling between them, which we estimate from numerical simulations [1]. We show that for realistic parameters nearest neighbour entanglement is present even at room temperature. We quantify the amount of entanglement in terms of negativity and single base von Neumann entropy. We find that the strength of the single base von Neumann entropy depends on the neighbouring sites, thus questioning the notion of treating single bases as logically independent units. We derive an analytical expression for the binding energy of the coupled chain in terms of entanglement and show the connection between entanglement and correlation energy, a quantity commonly used in quantum chemistry.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1006.4053

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We model the electron clouds of nucleic acids in DNA as a chain of coupled quantum harmonic oscillators with dipole-dipole interaction between nearest neighbours resulting in a van der Waals type bonding. Crucial parameters in our model are the distances between the acids and the coupling between them, which we estimate from numerical simulations [1]. We show that for realistic parameters nearest neighbour entanglement is present even at room temperature. We quantify the amount of entanglement in terms of negativity and single base von Neumann entropy. We find that the strength of the single base von Neumann entropy depends on the neighbouring sites, thus questioning the notion of treating single bases as logically independent units. We derive an analytical expression for the binding energy of the coupled chain in terms of entanglement and show the connection between entanglement and correlation energy, a quantity commonly used in quantum chemistry.
A study published on arXiv proved through a mathematical model that the macroscopic electron clouds shared between adjacent base pairs inside the DNA double helix structure maintain a strong quantum entanglement state even at room temperature (300 K), which is around body temperature. As a result of modeling the electron clouds of the DNA molecule as a chain of coupled quantum harmonic oscillators, it was confirmed that the van der Waals binding energy due to the dipole-dipole interaction between adjacent bases matches the pure quantum entanglement energy. This is a revolutionary study showing that the inherent structural stability of DNA, which is difficult to fully explain with classical physics or thermodynamics alone, is fundamentally protected by the quantum superposition and entanglement of electrons, suggesting that the genetic information preservation system of living organisms is an optimized quantum system capable of withstanding thermal noise. [Quantum Biology Society] How DNA, the most fundamental genetic information preservation system of life, can maintain such perfect structural stability even in a complex and unstable biological environment has long been a massive mystery in the biological community. Until now, it has been thought that classical thermodynamic hydrogen bonds and van der Waals forces between base pairs maintain this stability. Recently, however, a groundbreaking study mathematically proving that the source of microscopic interactions occurring inside DNA is none other than quantum entanglement has been published, drawing the attention of the global scientific community. The paper titled "Quantum entanglement between the electron clouds of nucleic acids in DNA," published in the preprint repository arXiv, is a monumental achievement conducted by a joint research team including Elisabeth Rieper and Vlatko Vedral of the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) at the National University of Singapore, and Janet Anders of University College London (UCL) in the UK. ■ Quantum Entanglement of DNA Electron Clouds Maintained at Room Temperature The research team modeled the electron clouds of a single DNA strand as a chain of coupled quantum harmonic oscillators with dipole-dipole interaction between nearest neighbors. By mathematically analyzing the behavior of the macroscopic electron clouds shared between adjacent base pairs, the researchers theoretically proved that the coupling between electron clouds is dominant over the biological temperature (300 K), indicating that a very strong nearest neighbor entanglement state exists without being destroyed even in a room temperature environment. The simulator below helps to intuitively understand how the electron clouds between adjacent DNA bases form quantum entanglement and how that coupling (entanglement) changes depending on the distance and interaction strength between bases. ■ A Quantum Mechanical Shield Protecting the Genetic Information of Life This study clearly shows the surprising fact that the van der Waals binding energy connecting the DNA strands is practically identical to the binding energy of the coupled chain derived from the quantum entanglement of electrons. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that quantum states are easily destroyed in a hot and wet biological environment, DNA was instead effectively withstanding macroscopic thermal noise and defending against errors in genetic information by strongly entangling the electron clouds of neighboring bases. This strongly suggests that the genetic material of life itself operates as a highly optimized quantum system through a long evolutionary process, presenting a new milestone in the convergence research of modern quantum biology and genetics. https://arxiv.org/abs/1006.4053
Abstract We study the entanglement Hamiltonian for finite intervals in infinite quantum chains for two different free-particle systems: coupled harmonic oscillators and fermionic hopping models with dimerization. Working in the ground state, the entanglement Hamiltonian describes again free bosons or fermions and is obtained from the correlation functions via high-precision numerics for up to several hundred sites. Far away from criticality, the dominant on-site and nearest-neighbour terms have triangular profiles that can be understood from the analytical results for a half-infinite interval. Near criticality, the longer-range couplings, although small, lead to a more complex picture. A comparison between the exact spectra and entanglement entropies and those resulting from the dominant terms in the Hamiltonian is also reported.
We study the entanglement Hamiltonian for finite intervals in infinite quantum chains for two different free-particle systems: coupled harmonic oscillators and fermionic hopping models with dimerization. Working in the ground state, the entanglement Hamiltonian describes again free bosons or fermions and is obtained from the correlation functions via high-precision numerics for up to several hundred sites. Far away from criticality, the dominant on-site and nearest-neighbour terms have triangular profiles that can be understood from the analytical results for a half-infinite interval. Near criticality, the longer-range couplings, although small, lead to a more complex picture. A comparison between the exact spectra and entanglement entropies and those resulting from the dominant terms in the Hamiltonian is also reported.
We investigate entanglement in a linear chain of NNN polar molecules coupled by dipole interaction. In our model, nearest neighbour interaction predominate, and we compute entanglement with the help of a two-party correlation entanglement measure. We find that, in this system, only excited states are entangled. Moreover, when an electrostatic field is applied, energy levels crossings occur, changing significantly the system's entanglement properties. We make a systematic study of the entanglement dependency on the inter molecular distance separating pairs of molecules, different partitions of the chain and physical parameters as the temperature and the electrostatic field's intensity, showing that it persists for relatively high temperatures and changes its nature with varying field.
In order to quantify entanglement between two parts of a quantum system, one of the most used estimators is the Von Neumann entropy. Unfortunately, computing this quantity for large interacting quantum spin systems remains an open issue. Faced with this difficulty, other estimators have been proposed to measure entanglement efficiently, mostly by using simulations in the valence-bond basis. We review the different proposals and try to clarify the connections between their geometric definitions and proper observables. We illustrate this analysis with new results of entanglement properties of spin-1 chains.
The heat capacity of a system quantifies how it energetically responds to changes in temperature at equilibrium. Whilst this quantity is positive and even additive for non-interacting systems, self-gravitating systems such as stars or subsystems of strongly interacting quantum systems are known to have negative or anomalous specific heat capacities. In this work, we investigate how the presence of entanglement at equilibrium can influence how an interacting system responds energetically to changes in temperature. We examine the local heat capacity of interacting quantum systems providing an analytical understanding for when anomalies occur. Most interestingly, we find a connection between local heat capacity anomalies and entanglement by deriving a separability bound based on the fluctuations of local and interaction energies. We illustrate our results with two examples (i) a nearest neighbour spin-1/2 chain and (ii) two coupled quantum harmonic oscillators. Lastly, we provide an information-theoretic formula connecting mutual information and athermality to the non-additivity of the heat capacity. Our results provide model-independent thermodynamic entanglement detection bounds and insight into the relationship between quantum correlations and the heat capacity of quantum systems.