I got an email from an old friend (the perfect way to distract from my assembling the figures for my manuscript) about this ... Quantum secrets of photosynthesis revealed. Check this out:
"We have obtained the first direct evidence that remarkably long-lived wavelike electronic quantum coherence plays an important part in energy transfer processes during photosynthesis," said Graham Fleming, the principal investigator for the study. "This wavelike characteristic can explain the extreme efficiency of the energy transfer because it enables the system to simultaneously sample all the potential energy pathways and choose the most efficient one."
The word efficient caught my eye ... and uhm ... I guess I'll head back to my figures.
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I think this is interesting from a number of different perspectives. What they specifically mention is the efficiency of photosynthesis - which is presumably near a hundred percent - well above what we are currently capable of technologically with the conversion of solar energy. They suggest that by understanding how plants are capable of such efficiency we may be able to achieve similar efficiencies - which could could dramatically improve the economics of solar energy. Then of course there is the physics involved - which I do not as of yet understand - although I put a little time into understanding quantum mechanics (including the mathematics) a fair number of years ago. But presumably the system involves quantum coherences (represented by the non-diagonal of the probability density operator - as I remember) which occur on a scale which they regard as "remarkable." Not sure how "remarkable" that is - but this is a system at normal rather than supercooled temperatures, so I suppose this is "remarkable." Moreover, in a way that I personally do not understand, it is presumably able to explore all possible paths and "choose" the most efficient among them. Perhaps this is related to the presumed power of quantum computation. In any case, if this is quantum coherence at a scale that we may not have thought possible, then perhaps this will also have implications in terms of quantum computers. Not something which the article mentions, but it would seem reasonable.
In any case, the "technical" article is already online as part of the April 18th issue of "Nature." I don't have a subscription, so I will have to get it elsewhere.