Even powerful supercomputers have difficulty simulating quantum phenomena. But now a UC Berkeley-led research team reports in Physical Review X, a peer-reviewed open-access journal published by the American Physical Society, on the realization of a quantum simulator (assembly of qubits) that can potentially give new insights into complex biological quantum systems in the future.
“This is a proof-of-principle experiment which simulates an aspect of a transport phenomenon that occurs in some biological systems,” said team member Börge Hemmerling, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy who joined UCR last year. “In photosynthesis, for example, light excites a molecule and this excitation or energy packet is transported towards a ‘place’ in the plant where it is stored in a more permanent, durable way – it’s as if the plant was charging its batteries. What’s interesting is that this transport happens in the real biological system with almost no losses, and that the environment – in the case of plants other molecules present in leaves – can aid the transport process.”
The Berkeley simulation demonstrates this aspect of an environment aiding an energy transport process in a simple system. The system consists of two trapped calcium ions; the environment is given by the motion of the ions.
“We were able to show that the successful transfer of excitation between the ions can be enhanced or suppressed depending on the coupling to the environment,” said Hemmerling, who participated in the research while he was a postdoctoral researcher UC Berkeley. “While our experiment does not yet give new insights into the real biological process, it is a promising first step towards more realistic implementations of such simulations in future experiments.”
The research was featured on the cover of the January-March 2018 issue of the journal.
–Iqbal Pittalwala