Emergence of molecular chirality due to chiral interactions in a biological environment

TL;DR

This paper investigates how chiral interactions influence molecular chirality in biological environments, revealing that weak coupling preserves initial chirality while strong coupling with memory effects leads to Markovian dynamics.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of chiral state discrimination considering environmental interactions and different coupling regimes, highlighting the role of chiral interactions in maintaining molecular chirality.

Findings

Weak coupling preserves initial chiral states by preventing racemization.

Strong coupling with memory effects results in Markovian behavior at long times.

Chiral interactions inhibit decoherence-induced racemization.

Abstract

We explore the interplay between tunneling process and chiral interactions in the discrimination of chiral states for an ensemble of molecules in a biological environment. Each molecule is described by an asymmetric double-well potential and the environment is modeled as a bath of harmonic oscillators. We carefully analyze different time-scales appearing in the resulting master equation at both weak- and strong-coupling limits. The corresponding results are accompanied by a set of coupled differential equations characterizing optical activity of the molecules. We show that, at the weak-coupling limit, chiral interactions prohibit the coherent racemization induced by decoherence effects and thus preserve the initial chiral state. At the strong-coupling limit, considering the memory effects of the environment, Markovian behavior is observed at long times.