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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Burgess, Adam, Werren, Nicholas, Gauger, Erik M.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.13704
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author Burgess, Adam
Werren, Nicholas
Gauger, Erik M.
author_facet Burgess, Adam
Werren, Nicholas
Gauger, Erik M.
contents Accurately modelling many-body quantum transport systems poses a challenge both conceptually and computationally due to the growth of the Hilbert space and the multi-scale nature of the geometries and couplings present in most naturally occurring networks. A compounding complexity of such systems is that the environment typically plays a key role in the transport dynamics. Utilising variational unitary transformations that displace environmental degrees of freedom allows for the deployment of a second-order master equation capable of capturing the dynamics of intermediate and strongly coupled systems, which are ubiquitous in microscopic energy transport systems. However, direct implementations of this approach suffer from fundamental scalability issues due to the complexity of the self-consistent equations required to solve for the variational parameters. Here, we present an efficient partitioning scheme that leverages the inherent multi-scale nature of natural energy transport networks. This enables scaling of the variational polaron framework to quantum energy transport systems, constituting hundreds to thousands of sites. Our work unlocks the physically motivated exploration of large transport networks, for example, those present within light-harvesting complexes and exciton transport in disordered semiconductors.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_13704
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Scalable framework for quantum transport across large physical networks
Burgess, Adam
Werren, Nicholas
Gauger, Erik M.
Quantum Physics
Chemical Physics
Accurately modelling many-body quantum transport systems poses a challenge both conceptually and computationally due to the growth of the Hilbert space and the multi-scale nature of the geometries and couplings present in most naturally occurring networks. A compounding complexity of such systems is that the environment typically plays a key role in the transport dynamics. Utilising variational unitary transformations that displace environmental degrees of freedom allows for the deployment of a second-order master equation capable of capturing the dynamics of intermediate and strongly coupled systems, which are ubiquitous in microscopic energy transport systems. However, direct implementations of this approach suffer from fundamental scalability issues due to the complexity of the self-consistent equations required to solve for the variational parameters. Here, we present an efficient partitioning scheme that leverages the inherent multi-scale nature of natural energy transport networks. This enables scaling of the variational polaron framework to quantum energy transport systems, constituting hundreds to thousands of sites. Our work unlocks the physically motivated exploration of large transport networks, for example, those present within light-harvesting complexes and exciton transport in disordered semiconductors.
title Scalable framework for quantum transport across large physical networks
topic Quantum Physics
Chemical Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.13704