Optimal rates for electron transfer in Marcus theory.
We examine electron transfer between two quantum states in the presence of a dissipative environment represented as a set of independent harmonic oscillators. For this simple model, the Marcus transfer rates can be derived from the equations of motion for electronic operators and we show that these rates are associated to an explicit expression for the environment correlation time. We demonstrate that as a manifestation of the Goldilocks principle, the optimal transfer is governed by a single parameter which is equal to just the inverse square root of 2.
Department of Physics, Queens College of the City University of New York, Flushing, New York 11367, USA.
Lev
L
Mourokh
Seth
S
Lloyd
D004579:Electron Transport; D007700:Kinetics; D008962:Models, Theoretical