The origin of chirality induced spin selectivity in photo-induced electron transfer

Abstract

Here we propose a mechanism by which spin polarization can be generated dynamically in chiral molecular systems undergoing photo-induced electron transfer. The proposed mechanism explains how spin polarization emerges in systems where charge transport is dominated by incoherent hopping, mediated by spin orbit and electronic exchange couplings through an intermediate charge transfer state. We derive a simple expression for the spin polarization that predicts a non-monotonic temperature dependence consistent with recent experiments. We validate this theory using approximate quantum master equations and the numerically exact hierarchical equations of motion. The proposed mechanism of chirality induced spin selectivity should apply to many chiral systems, and the ideas presented here have implications for the study of spin transport at temperatures relevant to biology, and provide simple principles for the molecular control of spins in fluctuating environments.

References in corpus (3)

• Role of Exchange Interactions in the Magnetic Response and Intermolecular Recognition of Chiral Molecules
• Chirality Induced Spin Coherence in Electron Transfer Reactions
• Electron spin relaxation in radical pairs: Beyond the Redfield approximation

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Direct Observation of Chirality-Induced Spin Selectivity in Electron Donor-Acceptor Molecules
• Many-Body Models for Chirality-Induced Spin Selectivity in Electron Transfer
• A simple improved low temperature correction for the hierarchical equations of motion
• Coupled charge and energy transfer dynamics in light harvesting complexes from a hybrid hierarchical equations of motion approach
• Towards Quantum Sensing of Chiral-Induced Spin Selectivity: Probing Donor-Bridge-Acceptor Molecules with NV Centers in Diamond