Polaron assisted charge transfer in model biological systems

Guangqi Li () and Bijan Movaghar
Additional contact information
Guangqi Li: Northwestern University
Bijan Movaghar: Northwestern University

The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, 2016, vol. 89, issue 11, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract We use a tight binding Hamiltonian to simulate the electron transfer from an initial charge-separating exciton to a final target state through a two-arm transfer model. The structure is copied from the model frequently used to describe electron harvesting in photosynthesis (photosystems I). We use this network to provide proof of principle for dynamics, in quantum system/bath networks, especially those involving interference pathways, and use these results to make predictions on artificially realizable systems. Each site is coupled to the phonon bath via several electron-phonon couplings. The assumed large energy gaps and weak tunneling integrals linking the last 3 sites give rise to“Stark Wannier like” quantum localization; electron transfer to the target cluster becomes impossible without bath coupling. As a result of the electron-phonon coupling, local electronic energies relax when the site is occupied, and transient polaronic states are formed as photo-generated electrons traverse the system. For a symmetric constructively interfering two pathway network, the population is shared equally between two sets of equivalent sites and therefore the polaron energy shift is smaller. The smaller energy shift however makes the tunnel transfer to the last site slower or blocks it altogether. Slight disorder (or thermal noise) can break the symmetry, permitting essentially a “one path”, and correspondingly more efficient transfer.

Keywords: Mesoscopic; and; Nanoscale; Systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1140/epjb/e2016-70332-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:eurphb:v:89:y:2016:i:11:d:10.1140_epjb_e2016-70332-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10051

DOI: 10.1140/epjb/e2016-70332-y

Access Statistics for this article

The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems is currently edited by P. Hänggi and Angel Rubio

More articles in The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems from Springer, EDP Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().