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| Paper IPM / Physic / 14086 |
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| Abstract: | |||||||
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We examine the olfactory discrimination of left- and right-handed enantiomers of chiral odorants based on the odorant-mediated electron transport from a donor to an acceptor embodied in a biological environment. The chiral odorant is eï¬ectively described by an asymmetric double-well potential and the biological environment is modeled as a bath of harmonic oscillators. The resulting Spin-Boson model is used to derive a Born-Markov master equation with which we obtain the elastic and inelastic electron tunneling rates. We show that the (in)elastic electron tunneling from left- and right-handed enantiomers of chiral odorants occurs with diï¬erent rates. The discrimination mechanism strongly depends on the ratio of tunneling frequency to localization frequency.
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