Events

Date: 22 August 2024   Time: 14:00 - 15:00

Location: Eng. 2.09

Chemistry seminar by Dr JuHyeon Kim, Fritz Haber Institute, Berlin

Full quantum state control of chiral molecules

Controlling the internal quantum states of chiral molecules for a selected enantiomer has a wide range of fundamental applications from collision and reaction studies, quantum information to precision spectroscopy. Using tailored microwave fields, Enantiomer-Specific State Transfer (ESST) enables the control and manipulation of chiral molecules at the quantum level. This enables rapid switching between samples of different enantiomers in a given state, holding great promise, for instance, for measuring parity violation in chiral molecules [1]. For such applications, achieving full enantiomer-specific state transfer is crucial. While ESST can theoretically reach 100% transfer efficiency, early studies reported only modest state-specific enantiomeric enrichment, limited to a few percent [2,3]. This is primarily due to the thermal population of rotational states [2,3] and the spatial degeneracy of these states [4].

To mitigate the effect of thermal population, we developed a new experimental scheme utilizing both ultraviolet and microwave radiation to deplete one of the rotational states before the ESST process [5,6], thereby significantly enhancing the transfer efficiency. In this way it has been possible to perform quantitative studies of ESST [5], albeit under conditions that were not yet ideal. Recently, we realized near-ideal conditions, overcoming both the limitations of thermal population and spatial degeneracy in rotational states [7]. Our results show that 96% state-specific enantiomeric purity can be obtained from a racemic mixture, in an approach that is universally applicable to all chiral molecules of C1 symmetry.

[1] I. Erez, E. R. Wallach, and Y. Shagam. Phys. Rev. X, 13, 041025, (2023)

[2] S. Eibenberger, J. Doyle, and D. Patterson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 123002 (2017)

[3] C. Pérez, A. L. Steber, S. R. Domingos, A. Krin, and M. Schnell, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 56, 12512 (2017)

[4] K. K. Lehmann, J. Chem. Phys. 149, 094201 (2018)

[5] J. H. Lee, J. Bischoff, A. O. Hernandez-Castillo, B. Sartakov, G. Meijer, and S. Eibenberger-Arias, Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 173001 (2022)

[6] J. H. Lee, J. Bischoff, A. O. Hernandez-Castillo, E. Abdiha, B. Sartakov, G. Meijer, and S. Eibenberger-Arias. New J. Phys. 26, 033015 (2024)

[7] J. H. Lee, E. Abdiha, B. Sartakov, G. Meijer, and S. Eibenberger-Arias. Nat. Commun. Accepted (2024)