2016/09/01 by King, Jonathan P., Sjolander, Tobias F., Blanchard, John W.
#Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1609.00406
Here we demonstrate that a term in the nuclear spin Hamiltonian, the antisymmetric 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 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.