Simulation of Nonradiative Energy Transfer in Photosynthetic Systems Using a Quantum Computer

Abstract

Photosynthesis is an important and complex physical process in nature, whose comprehensive understanding would have many relevant industrial applications, for instance, in the field of energy production. In this paper, we propose a quantum algorithm for the simulation of the excitonic transport of energy, occurring in the first stage of the process of photosynthesis. The algorithm takes in account the quantum and environmental effects (pure dephasing), influencing the quantum transport. We performed quantum simulations of such phenomena, for a proof of concept scenario, in an actual quantum computer, IBM Q, of 5 qubits. We validate the results with the Haken-Ströbl model and discuss the influence of environmental parameters on the efficiency of the energy transport.

New classifications for quantum bioinformatics: Q-bioinformatics, QCt-bioinformatics, QCg-bioinformatics, and QCr-bioinformatics

“…Notably, photosynthesis employs quantum coherence to capture light energy efficiently. In this process, chromophores transfer energy to reaction centers through entangled quantum states, increasing the overall efficiency of the energy transfer [ 6 , 124 ].…”

IBM quantum platforms: a quantum battery perspective

“…It is evident that in both cases the data depart from the ideal behavior of Eq. (33). Moreover, despite equivalent from the mathematical point of view, these two approaches lead to different results.…”

“…IBM quantum devices [31] offer the unique opportunity to simulate quantum systems under controlled conditions, leading to an exponentially increasing number of scientific paper covering various branches of research. The following are some examples that go from quantum chemistry and material sciences [32,33], to the analysis of molecular magnetic clusters and spinspin dynamical correlation functions [34,35], up to quantum field theories [36,37], high energy physics [38,39] and dark matter [40]. Lots of different publications are defined within real use cases belonging to different industries, including finance, material science and optimization [41][42][43].…”

Efficient method to simulate non-perturbative dynamics of an open quantum system using a quantum computer

“…Nevertheless, as quantum hardware and software improves, speedups relatively to classical simulation are expected to be observed (and some problems solved by quantum computing have been already shown to beat classical computing by a large factor [12,13]). In the context of quantum digital simulations of open quantum systems, several techniques have recently been proposed, such as using Kraus operators [14][15][16][17][18], solving the Lindblad equation with stochastic Schrödinger equations [19] or variationally [20], using the inherent decoherence of the quantum computer to implement the dissipative evolution [21,22], among others [23][24][25][26]. These techniques face some important issues, namely, the Kraus operators are hard to calculate in practice, Lindblad equations are restricted to Markovian environments and the natural decoherence of the quantum computer introduced by the qubits' environment is not fully controllable or its structure is not completely known, hence simulating arbitrary environments is hard.…”