Enantioselective Orientation of Chiral Molecules Induced by Terahertz Pulses with Twisted Polarization

Abstract

Chirality and chiral molecules are key elements in modern chemical and biochemical industries. Individual addressing, and the eventual separation of chiral enantiomers has been and still is an important elusive task in molecular physics and chemistry, and a variety of methods has been introduced over the years to achieve this goal. Here, we theoretically demonstrate that a pair of cross-polarized THz pulses interacting with chiral molecules through their permanent dipole moments induces an enantioselective orientation of these molecules. This orientation persists for a long time, exceeding the duration of the THz pulses by several orders of magnitude, and its dependency on temperature and pulses' parameters is investigated. The persistent orientation may enhance the deflection of the molecules in inhomogeneous electromagnetic fields, potentially leading to viable separation techniques.

9 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Attosecond-resolved photoionization of chiral molecules
• Enantiomer-Specific State Transfer of Chiral Molecules
• Controlled enantioselective orientation of chiral molecules with an optical centrifuge
• Principles of enantio-selective excitation in three-wave mixing spectroscopy of chiral molecules
• On the observation of field-free orientation of a symmetric top molecule by terahertz laser pulses at high temperature
• Coherent radiative decay of molecular rotations: a comparative study of terahertz-oriented versus optically aligned molecular ensembles
• Shaping of the time-evolution of field-free molecular orientation by THz laser pulses

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Cyclic three-level-pulse-area theorem for enantioselective state transfer of chiral molecules
• Three Dimensional Orientation of Complex Molecules Excited by Two-Color Femtosecond Pulses
• Enantioselective chiral orientation induced by a combination of a long and a short laser pulse
• Long-Lasting Orientation of Symmetric-top Molecules Excited by Two-Color Femtosecond Pulses
• Optimal Selective Orientation of Chiral Molecules Using Femtosecond Laser Pulses
• Orientation Echoes via Concerted Terahertz and Near-IR excitation
• Ionization-induced Long-lasting Orientation of Symmetric-top Molecules
• A quantum-chemical perspective on the laser-induced alignment and orientation dynamics of the CH${}_3$X (X = F, Cl, Br, I) molecules
• Increasing ion yield circular dichroism in femtosecond photoionisation using optimal control theory