Quantum Smell: Vibration-Assisted Electron Tunneling

This simulator models the vibrational theory of olfaction as an inelastic electron-tunneling problem: a donor and acceptor site 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. Sweep the odorant's vibrational frequency, swap hydrogen for its heavier deuterium isotope to shift that frequency down by 1/√2 without changing the molecule's shape, and watch the live resonance curve, the instanced tunneling-electron stream, and the rate readout respond in real time.