Guido Pagano [Rice University]

Abstract: Laser-cooled trapped ions are a versatile platform for studying out-of-equilibrium dynamics of open quantum systems as they provide highly tunable unitary and non-unitary operations on both internal and external degrees of freedom. In this talk, I will first discuss our recent results [1] on the simulation of molecular electron transfer in a multi-species trapped-ion crystal where spin and phonon degrees of freedom can be controlled independently. This setting allows us to realize a minimal model of molecular electron transfer where we can precisely control the donor-acceptor gap, the electronic coupling, the spin-phonon bath coupling, and the bath properties. With this toolbox, we can access the electron transfer dynamics in the nonperturbative regime where there is no clear hierarchy among the energy scales in the model, as it often occurs in biochemical systems [2,3]. I will discuss how trapped-ion systems can be used to simulate more complex molecular systems, showing preliminary measurements on the simulation of electron transfer with two damped vibrational modes and a numerical investigation of a model involving multiple molecular sites [4].

[1] V. So, M. Duraisamy Suganthi, et al., Science Advances, 10, eads8011 (2024)[2] D. J. Gorman et al., PRX 8, 011038 (2018)

[3] F. Schlawin, M. Gessner, et al., PRXQ, 2, 010314 (2021)

[4] D. Fallas-Padilla et al. in preparation (2025)