Progress toward a first observation of parity violation in chiral molecules by high-resolution laser spectroscopy

TL;DR

This paper discusses the collaborative efforts and progress made towards the first experimental observation of parity violation in chiral molecules using high-resolution laser spectroscopy, highlighting recent experimental advancements.

Contribution

It presents a unified strategy and recent progress in measuring parity violation energy differences in chiral molecules, a challenge yet to be experimentally achieved.

Findings

Progress in synthesizing chiral molecules for PV studies

Development of high-resolution laser spectroscopy techniques

Identification of future directions for PV observation

Abstract

Parity violation (PV) effects in chiral molecules have so far never been experimentally observed. To take this challenge up, a consortium of physicists, chemists, theoreticians and spectroscopists has been established and aims at measuring PV energy differences between two enantiomers by using high-resolution laser spectroscopy. In this article, we present our common strategy to reach this goal, the progress accomplished in the diverse areas, and point out directions for future PV observations. The work of Andr\'e Collet on bromochlorofluoromethane enantiomers, their synthesis and their chiral recognition by cryptophanes made feasible the first generation of experiments presented in this paper.