Prototype quantum simulator of structured environment-assisted energy transfer

As much as we like to complain about noise, classical and quantum noise are relevant to energy capture, storage, and conversion processes. To extend the capability of experimental platforms to probe complex structured environments in open quantum systems, we study the the interplay of classical and quantum (stationary Gaussian) noise on energy transfer dynamics. We characterize a prototype open quantum system simulator consisting of a phase damped quantum oscillator interacting with a noisy classical environment on a trapped-ion quantum computer. D. J. Gorman et al. (2018) experimentally demonstrated how a simple quantum environment of a single thermalized harmonic oscillator enables transport and simulates vibrationally-assisted energy transfer (VAET). Recent fidelity improvements in encoding VAET dynamics allow for observation of more subtle noise interplay effects. The prototype simulator uses VAET dynamics where the controllable bosonic modes approximate a quantum reservoir, the classical noise is injected by the control laser, and each noise source can be encoded with near arbitrary spectral properties. We analyze the preliminary experimental and numerical simulation results using IonSim.jl and compare them to recent theoretical predictions by Li et al. (2021).