Antisymmetric Couplings Enable Direct Observation of Chirality in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

Abstract

Here we demonstrate that a term in the nuclear spin Hamiltonian, the antisymmetric \textit{J}-coupling, is fundamentally connected to molecular chirality. We propose and simulate a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiment to observe this interaction and differentiate between enantiomers without adding any additional chiral agent to the sample. The antisymmetric \textit{J}-coupling may be observed in the presence of molecular orientation by an external electric field. The opposite parity of the antisymmetric coupling tensor and the molecular electric dipole moment yields a sign change of the observed coupling between enantiomers. We show how this sign change influences the phase of the NMR spectrum and may be used to discriminate between enantiomers.