Seminar
Tuesday, 28 February, 2012
Group Seminar MPQ: Energy transport in quantum chains
Tuesday, 28.02.2012 10:00 a.m. (s.t.) in Herbert-Walther-lecture room, MPQ Garching
Daniel Manzano, Institut für Quantenoptik und Quanteninformation, University of Innsbruck.
We have analyzed the steady-state and transient energy transfer in chain composed by identical quantum systems with next neighbors interactions and connecting two thermal reservoirs. Principally we analyze the case where the subsystems are qubits and harmonic oscillators. Through an analytic treatment we find that the energy current is independent of the system size, hence violating Fourier's law of heat conduction. The classical diffusive behavior in Fourier's law of heat conduction can be recovered by introducing decoherence to the quantum systems constituting the chain. Implications of these results on energy transfer in biological light harvesting systems, and the role of quantum coherences and entanglement are discussed.