Studying light–matter interactions and energy transfer at the nanoscale with a trapped–ion quantum computer
A grand challenge in materials sciences is to control energy transduction, transfer and dissipation at the nanoscale. Meeting this challenge requires progress in nanoscale fabrication and synthesis, but equally importantly, also progress in our understanding of how nanoscale structure influences these phenomena. Although detailed quantum mechanical models exist that capture the structure and physics of materials and molecular species, solving these models to calculate the relevant emergent phenomena, which often occur over vastly different time and energy scales, has so far proven difficult. In this project, we studied how to model energy transfer and light-matter interactions using trapped-ion quantum computers. Our studies focused on emulation of critical processes in natural systems, such as the well-known photosynthetic pigment-protein complexes responsible for capturing and transducing light to electrons. In addition, we implemented proof-of-principle experiments demonstrating that such calculations are possible on trapped-ion quantum computing hardware. These studies and experiments pave the way to investigate energy transport and transduction in a detail not accessible with classical computing technologies. We expect that our studies will allow to extract important guiding principles on how to improve the efficiency of nano-scale light-harvesting and transduction devices.