Robust and highly-efficient discrimination of chiral molecules through three-mode parallel paths

TL;DR

This paper introduces a fast, robust method for distinguishing chiral molecules using combined one- and two-photon processes in a three-mode parallel path setup, leveraging shortcuts to adiabaticity for efficiency.

Contribution

It presents a novel three-mode parallel path scheme with shortcuts to adiabaticity for rapid, robust discrimination of chiral molecules, improving upon existing methods.

Findings

Effective discrimination of enantiomers demonstrated in 1,2-propanediol.

High efficiency and robustness against experimental imperfections.

Potential for practical laboratory applications in chiral separation.

Abstract

We propose to discriminate chiral molecules by combining one- and two-photon processes in a closed-loop configuration. The one-photon-coupling intrinsic {\pi}-phase difference between two enantiomers leads to their different superposition states, which is then followed by a two-photon process through three-mode parallel paths (3MPPs), enabling the discrimination of enantiomers by inducing their entirely-different population distributions. The 3MPPs are constructed by "chosen paths", a method of shortcuts to adiabaticity (STA), exhibiting a fast two-photon process. As an example, we propose to perform the scheme in 1, 2-propanediol molecules, which shows relatively robust and highly-efficient results under considering the experimental issues concerning unwanted transitions, imperfect initial state, pulse shaping, control errors and the effect of energy relaxations. The present work may provide help for laboratory researchers in a robust separation of chiral molecules.