Synthetic nanoscale quantum emitter rings for efficient excitation transport*

Light-harvesting complexes (LHCs) are composed of rings of chromophores. They efficiently collect and transport solar energy to the photosynthetic reaction center. To explain this photo-physics, one could model them as sub-wavelength rings of optical dipoles, which support dark eigenmodes and exhibit efficient excitation energy transfer [1-4]. We present a theoretical investigation of the optical properties of coupled few-emitter nanoscale ring geometries, which offer insights into achieving synthetic LHCs with state-of-the-art experimental techniques and understanding the extraordinary optical properties of natural LHCs. Our study opens up scopes to harness solar energy with a diverse class of coupled rings, for example, utilizing controlled geometry of quantum dots and crafting inter-node loss-less links in a quantum network.

[1] M. Moreno-Cardoner et al., Phys. Rev. A 100, 023806 (2019).

[2] J. A. Needham et al., New J. Phys. 21, 073061 (2019).

[3] V. Scheil et al., Nanomaterials 13, 851 (2023).

[4] R. Holzinger et al., arXiv:2309.11376 (2023).