Optimal rates for electron transfer in Marcus theory

We examine electron transfer between two quantum states in the presence of a dissipative environment represented as a set of independent harmonic oscillators. For this simple model, the Marcus transfer rates can be derived from the equations of motion for electronic operators and we show that these...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Mourokh, Lev, Lloyd, Seth
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Physical Society 2014
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/84924
Description
Summary:We examine electron transfer between two quantum states in the presence of a dissipative environment represented as a set of independent harmonic oscillators. For this simple model, the Marcus transfer rates can be derived from the equations of motion for electronic operators and we show that these rates are associated to an explicit expression for the environment correlation time. We demonstrate that as a manifestation of the Goldilocks principle, the optimal transfer is governed by a single parameter which is equal to just the inverse square root of 2.