2020/11/16 by David Ayuso, Ayuso, David, Andrés F. Ordóñez +5
Chemistry · Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #Molecular spectroscopy and chirality #Optics (physics.optics) #Quantum Information and Cryptography
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2011.07873
openalex publication_date 2020/11/16 · openalex created_date 2022/10/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Sculpting sub-cycle temporal structures of optical waveforms allows one to\nimage and even control electronic clouds in atoms, molecules and solids. Here\nwe show how the transverse spin component arising upon spatial confinement of\nsuch optical waveforms enables extremely efficient chiral recognition and\ncontrol of ultrafast chiral dynamics. When an intense few-cycle, linearly\npolarized laser pulse is tightly focused into a medium of randomly oriented\nchiral molecules, the medium generates light which is elliptically polarized,\nwith opposite helicities and opposite rotations of the polarization ellipse in\nmedia of opposite handedness. In contrast to conventional optical activity of\nchiral media, this new nonlinear optical activity is driven by purely\nelectric-dipole interactions and leads to giant enantio-sensitivity in the near\nVIS-UV domain, where optical instrumentation is readily available. Adding a\npolarizer turns rotation of the polarization ellipse into highly\nenantio-sensitive intensity of the nonlinear-optical response. Sub-cycle\noptical control of the incident light wave enables full control over the\nenantio-sensitive response. The proposed all-optical method not only enables\nextremely efficient chiral discrimination, but also ultrafast imaging and\ncontrol of chiral dynamics with commercially available optical technology.\n