Published in Nature Communications: A team of researchers has shown how noise can help transfer energy faster and more efficiently.
Energy transfer occurs in plants and bacteria when they harvest light during photosynthesis using large antenna complexes.This light, or energy, is transported to reaction centres where the first chemical steps take place for the storage of the energy in form of sugars.
Almost a decade ago, a US led study proposed that the transport of energy in the antenna may not behave like classical particles, following a random path towards the energy centre, but instead has wave-like properties, which would allow all possible routes, including the most efficient one.
While this qantum coherence could explain the extreme efficiency of the photosynthesis process, biological systems are also very noisy. And noise, or something that disturbs the wave, usually inhibits wave motion and can slow it down substantially.
But recent research has indicated that there are certain situations in which noise, or environmental decoherence, can even improve wave transport.
The phenomenon is called Environment-Assisted Quantum Transport (ENAQT), but until now it has never been directly demonstrated.
In Nature Communications, a research team led by Dr Ivan Kassal from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems report an experimental simulation of environment-assisted coherent transport, using an engineered network of laser-written waveguides.
Dr Kassal said that by demonstrating that noise can improve the efficiency of wave transport, "we have taken steps towards understanding this process and applying our understanding to the creation of renewable-energy devices.”
It is the first implementation of controlled quantum decoherence in integrated optics. According to the authors this opens the way for novel quantum computation techniques that take advantage of noise. It also opens the possibility of applying ENAQT to engineered quantum systems, for instance using controlled noise to help waves to get from their source to their destination faster and more efficiently.