Charge and Spin Dynamics and Enantioselectivity in Chiral Molecules

TL;DR

This paper investigates how charge and spin dynamics in chiral molecules lead to spin polarization and enantiomer separation, highlighting the roles of electron correlations and transient behaviors in spin selectivity.

Contribution

It demonstrates that electron correlations are essential for sustained spin selectivity and provides a detailed analysis of transient charge and spin dynamics in chiral molecules.

Findings

Spin polarization is induced in chiral molecules after coupling to a metallic reservoir.

Electron correlations are crucial for maintaining intrinsic spin anisotropy in stationary states.

Transient dynamics offer insights into enantiomer separation through different spin polarizations.

Abstract

Charge and spin dynamics is addressed in chiral molecules immediately after the instantaneous coupling to an external metallic reservoir. It is shown how a spin-polarization is induced in the chiral structure as a response to the charge dynamics. The dynamics indicate that chiral induced spin selectivity is an excited states phenomenon which, in the transient regime partly can be captured using a simplistic single particle description, however, in the stationary limit definitively shows that electron correlations, e.g., electron-vibration interactions, crucially contribute to sustain an intrinsic spin anisotropy that can lead to a non-vanishing spin selectivity. The dynamics, moreover, provide insight to enantiomer separation, due to different acquired spin-polarizations.