Stability of Chiral States, Role of Intermolecular Interactions and Molecular Parity Violation

TL;DR

This paper investigates how molecular parity violation and intermolecular interactions influence the stability and racemization of chiral states, highlighting conditions where parity violation effects remain observable despite environmental interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a model combining symmetry breaking due to molecular parity violation with environmental effects, elucidating their roles in stabilizing or racemizing chiral states.

Findings

Symmetry breaking can halt tunneling, stabilizing chiral states.

Intermolecular interactions induce incoherent tunneling and racemization.

Parity violation effects can be experimentally observed under certain conditions.

Abstract

We study the problem of stability of chiral states, also known as problem of chirality, within the framework of a two-dimensional approximation of a symmetric double-well potential. We show how the symmetry breaking of the potential due to the molecular parity violation can stop the tunneling in a coherent way, accordingly stabilize the chiral states. Then, we use the quantum Brownian motion within a linear Lindblad-type equation to model how the intermolecular interactions make the tunneling incoherent, thus inducing a racemization by dephasing. Finally, we investigate the normal physical conditions where the dephasing racemization does not suppress the effects of the molecular parity violation, accordingly the molecular parity violation may be observed experimentally.