Exact and efficient quantum simulation of open quantum dynamics for various of Hamiltonians and spectral densities

Abstract

Recently, we have theoretically proposed and experimentally demonstrated an exact and efficient quantum simulation of photosynthetic light harvesting in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), cf. B. X. Wang, et al. npj Quantum Inf. 4, 52 (2018). In this paper, we apply this approach to simulate the open quantum dynamics in various photosynthetic systems with different Hamiltonians. By numerical simulations, we show that for Drude-Lorentz spectral density the dimerized geometries with strong couplings within the donor and acceptor clusters respectively exhibit significantly-improved efficiency. Based on the optimal geometry, we also demonstrate that the overall energy transfer can be further optimized when the energy gap between the donor and acceptor clusters matches the peak of the spectral density. Moreover, by exploring the quantum dynamics for different types of spectral densities, e.g. Ohmic, sub-Ohmic, and super-Ohmic spectral densities, we show that our approach can be generalized to effectively simulate open quantum dynamics for various Hamiltonians and spectral densities. Because log 2 N qubits are required for quantum simulation of an N -dimensional quantum system, this quantum simulation approach can greatly reduce the computational complexity compared with popular numerically-exact methods.