Recently it has been demonstrated that it is possible to harvest quantum resources other than entanglement from a coherent scalar field. Employing time-dependent perturbation theory, we present a complete analysis of the conditions under which a spatially extended Unruh-DeWitt detector coupled to the proper time derivative of the field can harvest coherence for any initial state of the field, as well as the energy cost that is required for each harvest. By studying harvesting under repeatable extractions it is proven that when the detector interacts with the field through a delta coupling coherence is catalytic. For a Gaussian smeared detector it is shown that harvesting from a coherent field depends on the phase of its amplitude distribution and its initial energy as well as on the mean radius of the detector and the mean interaction duration between the two. For a detector moving at a constant velocity and with a mean radius of the same order as its transition wavelength, we observe that, for relativistic speeds, coherence swelling effects are present the intensity of which depends on the dimension of the underlying Minkowski spacetime.
Transport phenomena in photosynthetic systems have attracted a great deal of attention due to their potential role in devising novel photovoltaic materials. In particular, energy transport in light-harvesting complexes is considered quite efficient due to the balance between coherent quantum evolution and decoherence, a phenomenon coined Environment-Assisted Quantum Transport (ENAQT). Although this effect has been extensively studied, its behavior is typically described in terms of the decoherence's strength, namely weak, moderate or strong. Here, we study the ENAQT in terms of quantum correla…
We predict the enhanced light harvesting of a protein-pigment complex when assembled to a quantum dot (QD) antenna. Our prototypical nanoassembly setup is composed of a Fenna-Mattews-Olson system hosting 8 Bacteriochlorophyll (BChl) a dyes, and a near-infrared emitting CdSe$_x$Te$_{(1-x)}$/ZnS alloy-core/shell nanocrystal. BChl a has two wide windows of poor absorption in the green and orange-red bands, precisely where most of the sunlight energy lies. The selected QD is able to collect sunlight efficiently in a broader band and funnel its energy by a (non-radiative) Förster resonance energy t…
We make a detailed comparison between entanglement harvesting for uniformly accelerated detectors in vacuum and static ones in a thermal bath at the Unruh temperature and find that, for a small energy gap relative to the Heisenberg energy of the detectors, static detectors in the thermal bath can harvest more entanglement and possess a comparatively larger harvesting-achievable range than the uniformly accelerated ones; however, as the energy gap grows sufficiently large, the uniformly accelerated detectors are instead likely to harvest more entanglement and possess a relatively larger harvest…
We explore whether acceleration assists entanglement harvesting for a pair of uniformly accelerated detectors in three different acceleration scenarios, i.e., parallel, anti-parallel and mutually perpendicular acceleration, both in the sense of the entanglement harvested and harvesting-achievable separation between the two detectors. Within the framework of entanglement harvesting protocols and the Unruh-DeWitt model of detectors locally interacting with massless scalar fields via a Gaussian switching function with an interaction duration parameter, we find that, in the sense of the entangleme…
Transition-metal-oxide (TMO) heterostructures are promising candidates for building photon-harvesting devices which can exploit optimal quantum transport of charge excitations generated by light absorption. Here we address the explicit role of an electric field on the quantum transport properties of photo-excitations subject to dephasing in one-dimensional chains coupled to a continuum of states acting as a sink. We show that the average transfer time to the sink is optimized for suitable values of both the coupling strength to the sink and the electric field, thus fully exploiting the coheren…
