Large Scale Simulations of Photosynthetic Antenna Systems: Interplay of Cooperativity and Disorder.

Large-scale simulations of light-matter interaction in natural photosynthetic antenna complexes containing more than one hundred thousands of chlorophyll molecules, comparable with natural size, have been performed. Photosynthetic antenna complexes present in Green sulfur bacteria and Purple bacteria have been analyzed using a radiative non-Hermitian Hamiltonian, well-known in the field of quantum optics, instead of the widely used dipole-dipole Frenkel Hamiltonian. This approach allows us to study ensembles of emitters beyond the small volume limit (system size much smaller than the absorbed wavelength), where the Frenkel Hamiltonian fails.

Ultraviolet Superradiance from Mega-Networks of Tryptophan in Biological Architectures.

Networks of tryptophan (Trp)─an aromatic amino acid with strong fluorescence response─are ubiquitous in biological systems, forming diverse architectures in transmembrane proteins, cytoskeletal filaments, subneuronal elements, photoreceptor complexes, virion capsids, and other cellular structures. We analyze the cooperative effects induced by ultraviolet (UV) excitation of several biologically relevant Trp mega-networks, thus giving insights into novel mechanisms for cellular signaling and control. Our theoretical analysis in the single-excitation manifold predicts the formation of strongly superradiant states due to collective interactions among organized arrangements of up to >10 Trp UV-excited transition dipoles in microtubule architectures, which leads to an enhancement of the fluorescence quantum yield (QY) that is confirmed by our experiments.

Case report: Exploring chemoradiotherapy-induced leukoencephalopathy with 7T imaging and quantitative susceptibility mapping.

Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are widely used in the treatment of central nervous system tumors and acute lymphocytic leukemia even in the pediatric population. However, such treatments run the risk of a broad spectrum of cognitive and neurological deficits. Even though the correlation with cognitive decline is still not clear, neuroradiological defects linked to white matter injury and vasculopathies may be identified.

A Chirality-Based Quantum Leap.

There is increasing interest in the study of chiral degrees of freedom occurring in matter and in electromagnetic fields. Opportunities in quantum sciences will likely exploit two main areas that are the focus of this Review: (1) recent observations of the chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect in chiral molecules and engineered nanomaterials and (2) rapidly evolving nanophotonic strategies designed to amplify chiral light-matter interactions. On the one hand, the CISS effect underpins the observation that charge transport through nanoscopic chiral structures favors a particular electronic spin orientation, resulting in large room-temperature spin polarizations.

Well-Being of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Youth: The Influence of Rural and Urban Contexts on the Process of Building Identity and Disclosure.

The study investigates how the territorial community can influence the individual and social well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) youth and especially the recognition of their feelings and the construction of their own identity as well as their needs to be socially recognized. This research focuses on the experiences of 30 LGB individuals (23 males and 7 females), with a mean age of 25.07 years ( = 4,578), living in urban and rural areas of Southern Italy.

Disorder-Enhanced and Disorder-Independent Transport with Long-Range Hopping: Application to Molecular Chains in Optical Cavities.

Overcoming the detrimental effect of disorder at the nanoscale is very hard since disorder induces localization and an exponential suppression of transport efficiency. Here we unveil novel and robust quantum transport regimes achievable in nanosystems by exploiting long-range hopping. We demonstrate that in a 1D disordered nanostructure in the presence of long-range hopping, transport efficiency, after decreasing exponentially with disorder at first, is then enhanced by disorder [disorder-enhanced transport (DET) regime] until, counterintuitively, it reaches a disorder-independent transport (DIT) regime, persisting over several orders of disorder magnitude in realistic systems.

Thermal Decoherence of Superradiance in Lead Halide Perovskite Nanocrystal Superlattices.

Recent experiments by Rainò et al. ( 2018, 563, 671-675) have documented cooperative emission from CsPbBr nanocrystal superlattices, exhibiting the hallmarks of low-temperature superradiance. In particular, the optical response is coherent and the radiative decay rate is increased by a factor of 3, relative to that of individual nanocrystals.

Optimal dephasing for ballistic energy transfer in disordered linear chains.

We study the interplay between dephasing, disorder, and coupling to a sink on transport efficiency in a one-dimensional chain of finite length N, and in particular the beneficial or detrimental effect of dephasing on transport. The excitation moves along the chain by coherent nearest-neighbor hopping Ω, under the action of static disorder W and dephasing γ. The last site is coupled to an external acceptor system (sink), where the excitation can be trapped with a rate Γ_{trap}.

Interplay of different environments in open quantum systems: Breakdown of the additive approximation.

We analyze an open quantum system under the influence of more than one environment: a dephasing bath and a probability-absorbing bath that represents a decay channel, as encountered in many models of quantum networks. In our case, dephasing is modeled by random fluctuations of the site energies, while the absorbing bath is modeled with an external lead attached to the system. We analyze under which conditions the effects of the two baths can enter additively the quantum master equation.

Opening-assisted coherent transport in the semiclassical regime.

We study quantum enhancement of transport in open systems in the presence of disorder and dephasing. Quantum coherence effects may significantly enhance transport in open systems even in the semiclassical regime (where the decoherence rate is greater than the intersite hopping amplitude), as long as the disorder is sufficiently strong. When the strengths of disorder and dephasing are fixed, there is an optimal opening strength at which the coherent transport enhancement is optimized.

Collective couplings: Rectification and supertransmittance.

We investigate heat transport between two thermal reservoirs that are coupled via a large spin composed of N identical two-level systems. One coupling implements the dissipative Dicke superradiance. The other coupling is locally of the pure-dephasing type and requires to go beyond the standard weak-coupling limit by employing a Bogoliubov mapping in the corresponding reservoir.

Cooperative Shielding in Many-Body Systems with Long-Range Interaction.

In recent experiments with ion traps, long-range interactions were associated with the exceptionally fast propagation of perturbation, while in some theoretical works they have also been related with the suppression of propagation. Here, we show that such apparently contradictory behavior is caused by a general property of long-range interacting systems, which we name cooperative shielding. It refers to shielded subspaces that emerge as the system size increases and inside of which the evolution is unaffected by long-range interactions for a long time.

Optimal efficiency of quantum transport in a disordered trimer.

Disordered quantum networks, such as those describing light-harvesting complexes, are often characterized by the presence of peripheral ringlike structures, where the excitation is initialized, and inner structures and reaction centers (RCs), where the excitation is trapped and transferred. The peripheral rings often display distinguished coherent features: Their eigenstates can be separated, with respect to the transfer of excitation, into two classes of superradiant and subradiant states. Both are important to optimize transfer efficiency.

Focusing in multiwell potentials: applications to ion channels.

We investigate nonequilibrium stationary distributions induced by stochastic dichotomous noise in double-well and multiwell models of ion channel gating kinetics. The channel kinetics is analyzed using both overdamped Langevin equations and master equations. With the Langevin equation approach we show a nontrivial focusing effect due to the external stochastic noise, namely, the concentration of the probability distribution in one of the two wells of a double-well system or in one or more of the wells of the multiwell model.

Enhancement of the magnetic anisotropy barrier in critical long range spin systems.

Magnetic materials are usually characterized by anisotropy energy barriers which dictate the timescale of the magnetization decay and consequently the magnetic stability of the sample. Here we consider magnetization decay for spin systems in a d = 3 cubic lattice with an isotropic Heisenberg interaction decaying as a power law with a critical exponent α = d and on-site anisotropy. We show that the anisotropy energy barrier can be determined from the ergodicity breaking energy of the corresponding isolated system and that, unlike in the case of nearest neighbour interaction, the anisotropy energy barrier grows as the particle volume, V, and not as the cross-sectional area.

From closed to open one-dimensional Anderson model: transport versus spectral statistics.

Using the phenomenological expression for the level spacing distribution with only one parameter 0 ≤ β ≤ ∞ covering all regimes of chaos and complexity in a quantum system, we show that transport properties of the one-dimensional Anderson model of finite size can be expressed in terms of this parameter. Specifically, we demonstrate a strictly linear relation between β and the normalized localization length for the whole transition from strongly localized to extended states. This result allows one to describe all transport properties in the open system entirely in terms of the parameter β and the strength of the coupling to the continuum.

Distribution of resonance widths and dynamics of continuum coupling.

We analyze the statistics of resonance widths in a many-body Fermi system with open decay channels. Depending on the strength of continuum coupling, such a system reveals growing deviations from the standard chi-square (Porter-Thomas) width distribution. The deviations emerge from the process of increasing interaction of intrinsic states through common decay channels; in the limit of perfect coupling this process leads to the superradiance phase transition.

Magnetic reversal time in open long-range systems.

Topological phase space disconnection has been recently found to be a general phenomenon in many-body spin system with anisotropic interaction. We show that the power law divergence of magnetic reversal time at the energy signaling such disconnection is generic for long-range interacting systems with an exponent proportional to the number of particles. We also study the modifications induced putting the system in contact with a thermal bath.

Open system of interacting fermions: statistical properties of cross sections and fluctuations.

Statistical properties of cross sections are studied for an open system of interacting fermions. The description is based on the effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian that accounts for the existence of open decay channels preserving the unitarity of the scattering matrix. The intrinsic interaction is modeled by the two-body random ensemble of variable strength.

Topological nonconnectivity threshold in long-range spin systems.

We demonstrate the existence of a topological disconnection threshold, recently found by Borgonovi [J. Stat. Phys.

Time scale for magnetic reversal and the topological nonconnectivity threshold.

Anisotropic classical Heisenberg models with all-to-all spin coupling display a topological nonconnectivity threshold (TNT) for any number N of spins. Below this threshold, the energy surface is disconnected in two components with positive and negative total magnetizations, respectively, so that magnetization cannot reverse its sign and ergodicity is broken, even at finite N. Here, we solve the model in the microcanonical ensemble, using a recently developed method based on large deviation techniques, and show that a phase transition is present at an energy higher than the TNT energy.

Dynamical fidelity of a solid-state quantum computation.

In this paper we analyze the dynamics in a spin model of quantum computer. Main attention is paid to the dynamical fidelity (associated with dynamical errors) of an algorithm that allows to create an entangled state for remote qubits. We show that in the regime of selective resonant excitations of qubits there is no danger of quantum chaos.

Semiquantal approach to finite systems of interacting particles.

A novel approach is suggested for the statistical description of quantum systems of interacting particles. We show that the occupation numbers for single-particle states can be represented as a convolution of a classical analog of the eigenstate, with the quantum occupation number for noninteracting particles. The latter takes into account the wave function symmetry and depends on the unperturbed energy spectrum only.