Spatial enantioseparation of gaseous chiral molecules

TL;DR

This paper investigates how electromagnetic fields can induce spatial separation of gaseous chiral molecules by exploiting phase differences and gauge potentials in cyclic three-level systems, enabling enantioseparation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method for spatial enantioseparation using space-dependent phases and gauge potentials in cyclic three-level molecular systems.

Findings

Demonstrates spatial enantioseparation under typical molecular parameters

Shows phase differences lead to distinct spatial distributions for enantiomers

Utilizes gauge potentials to achieve separation in gaseous chiral molecules

Abstract

We explore the spatial enantioseparation of gaseous chiral molecules for the cyclic three-level systems coupled with three electromagnetic fields. Due to molecular rotations, the specific requirements of the polarization directions of the three electromagnetic fields lead to the space-dependent part of the overall phase of the coupling strengths. Thus, the overall phase of the coupling strengths, which differs with $\pi$ for the enantiomers in the cyclic three-level model of chiral molecules, varies intensely in the length scale of the typical wavelength of the applied electromagnetic fields. Under the induced gauge potentials resulting from the space-dependent part of the overall phase and the space-dependent intensities of coupling strengths, we further show spatial enantioseparation for typical parameters of gaseous chiral molecules.