arXiv:1208.2558physics.bio-ph
Quantum dynamics of the avian compass
Early discovery. Linked by one identifiable commenter. This paper is outside the main ranking; a mention is not an endorsement.
Abstract
The ability of migratory birds to orient relative to the Earth's magnetic field is believed to involve a coherent superposition of two spin states of a radical electron pair. However, the mechanism by which this coherence can be maintained in the face of strong interactions with the cellular environment has remained unclear. This Letter addresses the problem of decoherence between two electron spins due to hyperfine interaction with a bath of spin 1/2 nuclei. Dynamics of the radical pair density matrix are derived and shown to yield a simple mechanism for sensing magnetic field orientation. Rates of dephasing and decoherence are calculated ab initio and found to yield millisecond coherence times, consistent with behavioral experiments.
Bad article - what the title calls an "eye bath" and the article calls a "cellular bath" is really a "bath of hyperfine nuclei with 1/2 spin" (aka molecules?) which the electrons are interacting with. Basically, many bird eyeballs can entangle electron pairs for much longer than…
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