Hund's paradox and the collisional stabilization of chiral molecules

2008/11/30 by Johannes Trost, Klaus Hornberger · 1 voice · 2 citations
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Chemical Physics Studies #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Molecular spectroscopy and chirality #physics.atm-clus #quant-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.103.023202

published as Phys. Rev. Lett 103, 023202 (2009) · 4 pages, 1 figure; v3:corresponds to published version

openalex publication_date 2009/07/10 · arxiv created 2009/07/17 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We identify the dominant collisional decoherence mechanism which serves to stabilize and super-select the configuration states of chiral molecules. A high-energy description of this effect is compared to the results of the exact molecular scattering problem, obtained by solving the coupled-channel equations. It allows to predict the experimental conditions for observing the collisional suppression of the tunneling dynamics between the left-handed and the right-handed configuration of D2S2 molecules.

Citations

• Decoherence, einselection, and the quantum origins of the classical
• Zur Deutung der Molekelspektren. III.

Cited by

• What are we talking about when we discuss the Born-Oppenheimer approximation?
• Month-long calculation resolves 82-year-old quantum paradox

Discussions

• Part of the answer is that scattering readily distinguishes between enantiomers (but presumably is poor at distinguishing excitation levels). Chirality and racemisation: Some arrangements of matter po [stackexchange, 3 points]

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