Enantioselective fragmentation of an achiral molecule in a strong laser field

  • Chirality is omnipresent in living nature. On the single molecule level, the response of a chiral species to a chiral probe depends on their respective handedness. A prominent example is the difference in the interaction of a chiral molecule with left or right circularly polarized light. In the present study, we show by Coulomb explosion imaging that circularly polarized light can also induce a chiral fragmentation of a planar and thus achiral molecule. The observed enantiomer strongly depends on the orientation of the molecule with respect to the light propagation direction and the helicity of the ionizing light. This finding might trigger new approaches to improve laser-driven enantioselective chemical synthesis.

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Author:Kilian FehreORCiDGND, Sebastian EckartORCiDGND, Maksim KunitskiORCiDGND, Martin Pitzer, Stefan Zeller, Christian Sören JankeGND, Daniel TrabertORCiDGND, Jonas RistORCiDGND, Miriam WellerGND, Alexander Hartung, Lothar Schmidt, Till JahnkeORCiDGND, Robert Berger, Reinhard DörnerORCiDGND, Markus S. SchöfflerORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-488344
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau7923
ISSN:2375-2548
Pubmed Id:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30873429
Parent Title (English):Science advances
Publisher:Assoc.
Place of publication:Washington, DC [u. a.]
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Year of Completion:2019
Date of first Publication:2019/03/08
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2019/04/04
Volume:5
Issue:3, eaau7923
Page Number:6
First Page:1
Last Page:5
Note:
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
HeBIS-PPN:450768430
Institutes:Psychologie und Sportwissenschaften / Sportwissenschaften
Physik / Physik
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (English):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung-Nicht kommerziell 4.0