Discrimination of Chiral Molecules through Holonomic Quantum Coherent Control

TL;DR

This paper introduces a holonomic quantum control method using trapped-ion qudits to distinguish chiral molecules by exploiting their dipole moment differences, achieving high contrast and robustness.

Contribution

It presents a novel quantum optical approach leveraging holonomic quantum computation for efficient, noise-resistant chiral molecule discrimination.

Findings

Nearly 100% population contrast between enantiomers

Robustness to noise in the driving field

Effective in a quantum simulator setting

Abstract

A novel optical method for distinguishing chiral molecules is proposed and validated within a quantum simulator employing a trapped-ion qudit. This approach correlates the sign disparity of the dipole moment of chiral molecules with distinct cyclic evolution trajectories, yielding the unity population contrast induced by the different non-Abelian holonomies corresponding to the chirality. Harnessing the principles of holonomic quantum computation (HQC), our method achieves highly efficient, non-adiabatic, and robust detection and separation of chiral molecules. Demonstrated in a trapped ion quantum simulator, this scheme achieves nearly 100% contrast between the two enantiomers in the population of a specific state, showcasing its resilience to the noise inherent in the driving field.