Mirror symmetry breaking and restoration: the role of noise and chiral bias

TL;DR

This paper investigates how environmental noise and chiral bias influence mirror symmetry breaking and restoration in chemical systems, using a nonequilibrium potential approach to analyze the effects of fluctuations and external influences.

Contribution

It introduces a nonequilibrium effective potential for the Frank model, revealing how noise levels and chiral bias compete to restore or break mirror symmetry.

Findings

Mirror symmetry is restored when environmental noise exceeds a critical threshold.

Chiral bias from external fields influences the symmetry-breaking process.

The effective potential quantifies the competition between noise and bias.

Abstract

The nonequilibrium effective potential is computed for the Frank model of spontaneous mirror symmetry breaking (SMSB) in chemistry in which external noise is introduced to account for random environmental effects. When these fluctuations exceed a critical magnitude, mirror symmetry is restored. The competition between ambient noise and the chiral bias due to physical fields and polarized radiation can be explored with this potential.