An oxorhenium complex bearing a chiral cyclohexane-1-olato-2-thiolato ligand: synthesis, stereochemistry and theoretical study of parity violation vibrational frequency shifts

TL;DR

This study synthesizes a chiral oxorhenium complex and uses theoretical calculations to predict vibrational frequency shifts caused by parity violation, aiming to facilitate experimental detection of fundamental symmetry breaking.

Contribution

It introduces a new chiral oxorhenium complex with potential for measuring parity violation energy differences, combining synthesis, stereochemistry, and relativistic theoretical analysis.

Findings

Vibrational circular dichroism confirms chiral environment around rhenium

Relativistic calculations predict parity violating vibrational frequency differences of a few hundred millihertz

Predicted shifts are above the sensitivity of the planned molecular beam Ramsey interferometer

Abstract

In our effort towards measuring the parity violation energy difference between two enantiomers, a simple chiral oxorhenium complex 5 bearing enantiopure 2-mercaptocyclohexan-1-ol has been prepared as a potential candidate species. Vibrational circular dichroism revealed a chiral environment surrounding the rhenium atom, even though the rhenium is not a stereogenic centre itself, and enabled to assign the (1S,2S)-(-) and (1R,2R)-(+) absolute configuration for 5. For both compound 5 and complex 4, previously studied by us and bearing a propane-2-olato-3-thiolato ligand, relativistic calculations predict parity violating vibrational frequency differences of a few hundreds of millihertz, above the expected sensitivity attainable by a molecular beam Ramsey interferometer that we are constructing.