Enantiodiscrimination of chiral molecules via quantum correlation function

TL;DR

This paper introduces a quantum correlation-based method for enantiodiscrimination of chiral molecules, leveraging phase differences in a cyclic three-level system to distinguish left- and right-handed enantiomers.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach using quantum correlation functions in a driven cavity-molecule system for chiral discrimination, based on phase differences inherent to chiral molecules.

Findings

Quantum correlation functions depend on molecular chirality.

Left- and right-handed molecules can be discriminated via correlation measurements.

Method offers a new route for molecular chirality detection in pharmacology.

Abstract

We propose a method to realize enantiodiscrimination of chiral molecules based on quantum correlation function in a driven cavity-molecule system, where the chiral molecule is coupled with a quantized cavity field and two classical light fields to form a cyclic three-level model. According to the inherent properties of electric-dipole transition moments of chiral molecules, there is a $\pi$-phase difference in the overall phase of the cyclic three-level model for the left- and right-handed chiral molecules. Thus, the correlation function depends on this overall phase and is chirality-dependent. The analytical and numerical results indicate that the left- and right-handed chiral molecules can be discriminated by detecting quantum correlation function. Our work opens up a promising route to discriminate molecular chirality, which is an extremely important task in pharmacology and biochemistry.