Quantum Smell: Vibration-Assisted Electron Tunneling (2D)

This 2D counterpart draws the vibrational theory of olfaction as a flat donor–acceptor tunneling junction: a donor electrode and an acceptor electrode sandwich a bound odorant molecule, and an electron can hop across by shedding a quantum of the molecule's vibrational energy. The tunneling rate is a Lorentzian resonance in the vibrational frequency, peaking exactly where the molecule's stretch quantum ħω matches the receptor's electronic gap ΔE, riding on top of a baseline that decays exponentially with the tunneling distance. Swap the bound odorant between hydrogen, deuterium and tritium isotopomers — each with a genuinely different vibration frequency set by ω ∝ 1/√mass — sweep the electronic gap, and watch the live resonance curve and the peak-position readout shift to a new gap value in real time.