Dr. Felipe Caycedo-Soler

Email: felipe.caycedo[at]uni-ulm.de
Tel: +49-731-50-22915
Room O25/444
Institute for Theoretical Physics
Ulm University
Albert-Einstein Allee 11
D-89081 Ulm, Germany

My Research Interests

The main interest of my research is, on the one hand, to understand how an appropriate quantum mechanical description of relevant processes that support life, elucidates the biological fitness of species. On the other hand, and from a more pragmatic view, my interest heads towards setting clear guidelines for the design and implementation of devices that fulfill similar tasks as nature.

Simply stated, many biologically relevant processes are driven by events occurring within very small length scales, and thereby, in principle, are processes that require a quantum mechanical description for their full understanding. An important example corresponds to photosynthesis: here the light harvesting, the following excitation dynamics, and the use of these excitations for the final release of electrons, are all processes which take place within such small length scales. Therefore, as controlled experiments have shown, their description will heavily depend on the detailed characterization of quantum mechanical aspects of the associated degrees of freedom. This detailed modelling may bring light to the figures of merit that delineate the performance of the biological process under natural conditions and may reflect the success of these, in order to support species adaptation and survival.

My selected Publications

The role of non-equilibrium vibrational structures in electronic coherence and recoherence in pigment-protein complexes
A.W. Chin, J. Prior, R. Rosenbach, F. Caycedo-Soler, S. F. Huelga, M. B. Plenio
Nature Physics 9 (2), 113-118, 2013

Light-harvesting mechanism of bacteria exploits a critical interplay between the dynamics of transport and trapping
F. Caycedo-Soler, F. J. Rodríguez, L. Quiroga, N. F. Johnson
Physical review letters 104 (15), 158302 , 2010

Vibronic origin of long-lived coherence in an artificial molecular light harvester
J. Lim, D. Palecek, F. Caycedo-Soler, C. N. Lincoln, J. Prior, H. von Berlepsch, S. F. Huelga, M. B. Plenio, D. Zigmantas and J. Hauer
Nature communications 6, 7755,  2015

Memory in the photon statistics of multilevel quantum systems
F. C. Soler, F.J.  Rodriguez, G. Zumofen
Physical Review A 78 (5), 053813, 2008

Optical Signatures of Quantum Delocalization over Extended Domains in Photosynthetic Membranes 
C.A. Schroeder, F. Caycedo-Soler, S.F. Huelga, M.B. Plenio
Journal of physical chemistry A 119, 9043-9050, 2015

My Publications and preprints on the arXiv