Decoherence and quantum interference in a four-site model system: mechanisms and turnovers.

We study quantum interference effects in a four-level system which can be used as a minimal model to understand such behavior in systems from synthetic molecular structures to the photosystem-1 reaction center. The effects of environmental decoherence and relaxation on the electron transfer rate are investigated for several types of decoherence processes. The rate as a function of decoherence amplitude shows Kramers turnover, as expected.

Quantum interferences and electron transfer in photosystem I.

We have studied the electron transfer occurring in the photosystem I (PSI) reaction center from the special pair to the first iron-sulfur cluster. Electronic structure calculations performed at the DFT level were employed to determine the on-site energies of the fragments comprising PSI, as well as the charge transfer integrals between neighboring pairs. This electronic Hamiltonian was then used to compute the charge transfer dynamics, using the stochastic surrogate Hamiltonian approach to account for the coherent propagation of the electronic density but also for its energy relaxation and decoherence.

Enhancement of the Kondo effect through Rashba spin-orbit interactions.

We study a one-orbital Anderson impurity in a two-dimensional electron bath with Rashba spin-orbit interactions in the Kondo regime. The spin SU(2) symmetry-breaking term couples the impurity to a two-band electron gas. A Schrieffer-Wolff transformation shows the existence of the Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interaction away from the particle-hole symmetric impurity state.

Unscreened Coulomb interactions and the quantum spin Hall phase in neutral zigzag graphene ribbons.

A study of the effect of unscreened Coulomb interactions on the quantum spin Hall phase of finite-width neutral zigzag graphene ribbons is presented. By solving a tight-binding Hamiltonian that includes the intrinsic spin-orbit (ISO) interaction, exact expressions for band structures and edge-state wave functions are obtained. These analytic results, supported by tight-binding calculations, show that chiral spin-filtered edge states are composed of localized and damped oscillatory wave functions, reminiscent of the ones obtained in armchair ribbons.

Electron-electron and spin-orbit interactions in armchair graphene ribbons.

The effects of intrinsic spin-orbit and Coulomb interactions on low-energy properties of finite width graphene armchair ribbons are studied by means of a Dirac Hamiltonian. It is shown that metallic states subsist in the presence of intrinsic spin-orbit interactions as spin-filtered edge states, in contrast with the insulating behavior predicted for graphene planes. A charge-gap opens due to Coulomb interactions in neutral ribbons, that vanishes as Delta approximately 1/W, with a gapless spin sector.