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Journal of Physics B Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

Optimal networks for excitonic energy transport

Torsten Scholak, Thomas Wellens, Andreas Buchleitner

Published Sep 14, 2011• 45 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We investigate coherent and incoherent excitation transfer in a random network with dipole–dipole interactions as a model system describing energy transport, e.g., in photosynthetic light-harvesting complexes or gases of cold Rydberg atoms. For this purpose, we introduce and compare two different measures (the maximum output probability and the average transfer time) for the efficiency of transport from the input to the output site. We especially focus on optimal configurations which maximize the transfer efficiency and the impact of dephasing noise on the transport dynamics. For most configurations of the random network, the transfer efficiency increases when adding noise, giving rise to essentially classical transport. These noise-assisted configurations are, however, systematically less efficient than the optimal configurations. The latter reach their highest efficiency for purely coherent dynamics, i.e. in the absence of noise. 1.

DOI
10.1088/0953-4075/44/18/184012

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cond-mat.softCross-listedarXiv:2610.13949•Jul 24, 2026
We investigate coherent and incoherent excitation transfer in a random network with dipole–dipole interactions as a model system describing energy transport, e.g., in photosynthetic light-harvesting complexes or gases of cold Rydberg atoms. For this purpose, we introduce and compare two different measures (the maximum output probability and the average transfer time) for the efficiency of transport from the input to the output site. We especially focus on optimal configurations which maximize the transfer efficiency and the impact of dephasing noise on the transport dynamics. For most configurations of the random network, the transfer efficiency increases when adding noise, giving rise to essentially classical transport. These noise-assisted configurations are, however, systematically less efficient than the optimal configurations. The latter reach their highest efficiency for purely coherent dynamics, i.e. in the absence of noise. 1.
A variety of open quantum networks are currently under intense examination to model energy transport in photosynthetic systems. Here, we study the coherent transfer of a quantum excitation over a network incoherently coupled with a structured and small environment that effectively models the photosynthetic reaction center. Our goal is to distill a few basic, possibly universal, mechanisms or effects that are featured in simple energy-transfer models. In particular, we identify three different phenomena: the congestion effect, the asymptotic unitarity, and the staircase effects. We begin with few-site models, in which these effects can be fully understood, and then proceed to study more complex networks similar to those employed to model energy transfer in light-harvesting complexes.
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.
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.
Selective energy transport throughout a quantum network connected to more than one reaction center can play an important role in many natural and technological considerations in photosystems. In this work, we propose a method in which an excitation can be transported from the original site of the network to one of the reaction centers arbitrarily using independent sources of dephasing noises. We demonstrate that in the absence of dephasing noises, the coherent evolution of the system does not have any role in energy transport in the network. Therefore, incoherent evolution via application of dephasing noises throughout a selected path of the network leads to complete transferring of the excitation to a desired reaction center.
Abstract Quantum effects in photosynthetic energy transport in nature, especially for the typical Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) complexes, are extensively studied in quantum biology. Such energy transport processes can be investigated as open quantum systems that blend the quantum coherence and environmental noise, and have been experimentally simulated on a few quantum devices. However, the existing experiments always lack a solid quantum simulation for the FMO energy transport due to their constraints to map a variety of issues in actual FMO complexes that have rich biological meanings. Here we successfully map the full coupling profile of the seven-site FMO structure by comprehensive characterisation and precise control of the evanescent coupling of the three-dimensional waveguide array. By applying a stochastic dynamical modulation on each waveguide, we introduce the base site energy and the dephasing term in coloured noise to faithfully simulate the power spectral density of the FMO complexes. We show our photonic model well interprets the phenomena including reorganisation energy, vibrational assistance, exciton transfer and energy localisation. We further experimentally demonstrate the existence of an optimal transport efficiency at certain dephasing strength, providing a window to closely investigate environment-assisted quantum transport.
Photosystem I (PSI) is one of the most efficient natural photosynthetic complexes and serves as a structural prototype for understanding excitation energy transfer (EET) and designing artificial light-harvesting systems. Here, we construct a multilayer elliptical-conical quantum network inspired by PSI to investigate how antenna architecture affects EET. Excitation dynamics are simulated using the quantum jump approach combined with coherent modified Redfield theory (QJA-CMRT). The transfer efficiency exhibits a pronounced nonmonotonic dependence on pigment density, reaching a maximum of 0.86 at x=6 in the five-layer network. The optimal configuration contains 91 pigments, close to the number of core antenna pigments in natural PSI. Our combined density-of-states and kinetic analyses reveal that this nonmonotonic dependence originates from a trade-off: at low pigment densities, enhanced band overlap promotes energy transfer, whereas at high densities, excessive exciton delocalization compromises funnel directionality and reduces efficiency; the optimal configuration is consequently achieved at x=6. These findings provide insights into PSI antenna organization and offer guidelines for designing efficient artificial light-harvesting systems.