Feynman path integral approach to electron transport through DNA

Abstract

An electron moving along DNA is modelled as an electron moving and interacting with a large number of harmonic oscillators. Feynman's path integral with a variational method is used to derive the density matrix of the system. The ground state energy of the electron can be obtained from the diagonal part of the density matrix and the Feynman effective mass obtained from the off-diagonal part. These two quantities are calculated numerically and the results are presented. We found a phase transition when an electron with a light effective mass turns into a very heavy particle as the coupling strength increases.