Related papers: Can the photosynthesis first step quantum mechanis…
We review recent theoretical calculations of quantum entanglement in photosynthetic light harvesting complexes. These works establish, for the first time, a manifestation of this characteristically quantum mechanical phenomenon in…
The long-standing problem of nearly perfect photosynthetic yield in some types of bacteria and nearly all kinds of plants despite the interaction with a hot and noisy environment has witnessed quantum optical explanations in the last decade…
It has been known for many years that metallic nanoparticles can catalyse various chemical reactions, both in the dark and under illumination, through different mechanisms. In the last decade or so, many claims of plasmon-assisted "hot"…
The absorption of a single photon that excites a quantum system from a low to a high energy level is an elementary process of light-matter interaction, and a route towards realizing pure single-photon absorption has both fundamental and…
Photosynthesis is nature's route to convert intermittent solar irradiation into storable energy, while its use for an industrial energy supply is impaired by low efficiency. Artificial photosynthesis provides a promising alternative for…
Experimental/theoretical evidence for sustained vibration-assisted electronic (vibronic) coherence in the Photosystem II Reaction Center (PSII RC) indicates that photosynthetic solar-energy conversion might be optimized through the…
We analyze standard theoretical models of solar energy conversion developed to study solar cells and photosynthetic systems. We show that the assumption that the energy transfer to the reaction center/electric circuit is through a decay…
The early steps of light response occur in the outer segment of rod and cone photoreceptor. They involve the hydrolysis of cGMP, a soluble cyclic nucleotide, that gates ionic channels located in the outer segment membrane. We shall study…
Squaraine dyes (SQs) represent a versatile class of functional molecules with strong absorption and emission features, widely used as near-infrared sensitizers in organic and hybrid photovoltaic devices. In this context, the photodynamics…
In many important cases, the rate of excitation of a system embedded in an environment is significantly smaller than the internal system relaxation rates. An important example is that of light-induced processes under natural conditions, in…
A fundamental issue that limits the efficiency of many photoelectrochemical systems is that the photon absorption length is typically much longer than the electron diffusion length. Various photon management schemes have been developed to…
Excitonic contributions to absorption and photocurrent generation in semiconductor nanostructures are described theoretically and simulated numerically using steady-state non-equilibrium Green's function theory. In a first approach, the…
Quantum states of light play a pivotal role in modern science[1] and future photonic applications[2]. While impressive progress has been made in their generation and manipulation with high fidelities, the common table-top approach is…
Coherent manipulation of quantum states of light is key to photonic quantum information processing. In this Letter, we show that a passive two-level nonlinearity suffices to implement non-Gaussian quantum operations on propagating field…
Photosynthetic antenna complexes are responsible for absorbing energy from sunlight and transmitting it to remote locations where it can be stored. Recent experiments have found that this process involves long-lived quantum coherence…
We report detailed studies of the slow relaxation of the photoinduced excess charge carriers in organic metal-insulator-semiconductor field effect transistors consisting of poly(3-hexylthiophene) as the active layer. The relaxation process…
We study the problem of phase separation in systems with a positive definite order parameter, and in particular, in systems with absorbing states. Owing to the presence of a single minimum in the free energy driving the relaxation kinetics,…
Absorption and emission in inorganic bipolar solar cells based on low dimensional structures exhibiting the effects of quantum confinement is investigated in the framework of a comprehensive microscopic theory of the optical and electronic…
A photonic process named as "quantum state joining" has been recently experimentally demonstrated [C. Vitelli et al., Nature Photon. 7, 521 (2013)] that corresponds to the transfer of the internal two-dimensional quantum states of two input…
The interaction of light with a single two-level emitter is the most fundamental process in quantum optics, and is key to many quantum applications. As a distinctive feature, two photons are never detected simultaneously in the light…