Rotation and electric-field responses and absolute enantioselection in chiral crystals

TL;DR

This paper investigates the microscopic origins of chirality in elemental tellurium crystals and explores how electric and magnetic fields can induce rotation and polarization, offering insights for enantioselective applications.

Contribution

The study develops a realistic tight-binding model for Te crystal, identifying the microscopic mechanisms behind chirality and the couplings responsible for electric-field induced rotation.

Findings

Inter-band process driven by spin-dependent hopping is key to electric-field induced rotation.

Symmetry analysis reveals universal couplings in chiral materials.

Proposes experimental methods for enantioselection using combined electric and magnetic fields.

Abstract

Microscopic origin of chirality and possible electric-field induced rotation and rotation-field induced electric polarization are investigated. By building up a realistic tight-binding model for elemental Te crystal in terms of symmetry-adopted basis, we identify the microscopic origin of the chirality and essential couplings among polar and axial vectors with the same time-reversal properties. Based on this microscopic model, we elucidate quantitatively that the inter-band process, driven by the nearest-neighbor spin-dependent imaginary hopping, is the key factor in the electric-field induced rotation and its inverse response. From the symmetry point of view, these couplings are characteristic common to any chiral material, leading to a possible experimental approach to achieve absolute enantioselection by simultaneously applied electric and rotation fields, or magnetic field and electric current, and so on, as a conjugate field of the chirality.