2002/11/27 by Petr Král, Ioannis Thanopulos, Moshe Shapiro +1 · 2 citations
Chemistry · Neuroscience · Physics and Astronomy · #Molecular spectroscopy and chirality #Photoreceptor and optogenetics research #Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.90.033001
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. (January 2003) · REVTEX4, 4 pages, 3 Postscript figures
arxiv created 2002/11/27 · openalex publication_date 2003/01/23 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present an optical "enantio-selective switch" that, in two steps, turns a ("racemic") mixture of left-handed and right-handed chiral molecules into the enantiomerically pure state of interest. The optical switch is composed of an "enantio-discriminator" and an "enantio-converter" acting in tandem. The method is robust, insensitive to decay processes, and does not require molecular preorientation. We demonstrate the method on the purification of a racemate of (transiently chiral) D2S2 molecules, performed on the nanosecond time scale.