State-specific Enrichment of Chiral Conformers with Microwave Spectroscopy

Abstract

An interesting class of molecules is that in which the molecules do not possess a stereogenic center but can become chiral due to their spatial arrangement. These molecules can be seen as chiral conformers, whose two non-superimposable forms can interconvert from one another by rotations about single bonds. Here, we show that an initially racemic mixture of chiral conformers, such as a sample of cyclohexylmethanol, C${}_7$H${}_{14}$O (CHM), can be enantiomerically enriched by performing the enantio-selective process of coherent population transfer between rotational levels. By first performing a population transfer cycle, followed by a three-wave mixing experiment, we show that an enantiomeric excess in a rotational level of choice can be achieved. This represents the first experimental demonstration of such an effect in a chiral pair of conformers, and it showcases the broad applicability of three-wave mixing not only for analytical applications but also to a wide scope of experiments of fundamental interest.

15 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Enantiomer-Specific State Transfer of Chiral Molecules
• A selector for structural isomers of neutral molecules

Cited by in corpus (13)

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• Cyclic three-level-pulse-area theorem for enantioselective state transfer of chiral molecules
• Rational pulse design for enantiomer-selective microwave three-wave mixing
• Simultaneous Enantiomer-Resolved Ramsey Spectroscopy Scheme for Chiral Molecules
• Lie algebra for rotational subsystems of a driven asymmetric top
• Enantio-specific state transfer for symmetric-top chiral molecules
• Enantio-specific state transfer of chiral molecules through enantio-selective shortcut-to-adiabaticity paths
• Direct observation of time-dependent coherent chiral tunneling dynamics
• Enantiomer-Specific Pumping of Chiral Molecules
• Quantitative study of enantiomer-specific state transfer
• Enantiospecific Two-Photon Electric-Dipole Selection Rule of Chiral Molecules