title: Vibration-induced coherence enhancement of the performance of a biological quantum heat engine.
abstract: Photosynthesis has been a long-standing research interest due to its fundamental importance. Recently, studies on photosynthesis processes also have inspired attention from a thermodynamical aspect when considering photosynthetic apparatuses as biological quantum heat engines. Quantum coherence is shown to play a crucial role in enhancing the performance of these quantum heat engines. Based on the experimentally reported structure, we propose a quantum heat engine model with a non-Markovian vibrational mode. We show that one can obtain a performance enhancement easily for a wide range of parameters in the presence of the vibrational mode. Our results provide insights into the photosynthetic processes and a design principle mimicking natural organisms.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Hong-Bin
authors.initials: HB
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Pin-Yi
authors.initials: PY
authors.lastname: Chiu
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan.|Physics Division, National Center for Theoretical Sciences, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Yueh-Nan
authors.initials: YN
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D006358:Hot Temperature; D008954:Models, Biological; D010788:Photosynthesis; D011789:Quantum Theory; D014732:Vibration