Hypotheses on Many-Body Quantum Effects in Photosynthesis
摘要
Quantum mechanics plays key role in chemistry and biology—bonding, chemical reactions, photon absorption, electron-proton tunneling etc. Phenomena such as, Quantum coherenceQuantum coherence, superposition, interference, entanglement, quantum computing etc., which exist in the laboratories at very low temperatures, and at very special conditions were not suspected to be present, in the warm wet environment in biology. However, Biology continues to surprise and challenge us ! Wave like coherent propagation of an exciton quanta in photosynthetic systems (rather than an incoherent diffusion) have been reported in experiments [1–3, 6]. In recent decades quantum information [7–9] and other quantum processes are studied and debated in biology. In an early (2002) article [10] titled, ‘All basic condensed matter physics phenomena and notions mirror in biology ...’, I stated, ‘A few billoin years of evolutionary time and the complex process of ‘selection’ ‘has given biology an opportunity to explore a variety of condensed matter phenomena and situations, some of which have been discovered by humans in the laboratory, that too only in extreme non-biological conditions such as low temperatures, high purity, high pressure etc., in the last centuries’. I am revisiting the article and present certain Hypotheses on Manybody Quantum Effects in PhotosynthesisPhotosynthesis, based on very general considerations.