Photoinduced chirality of hydrogen peroxide molecules

Abstract

A problem of inducing a required sign of chirality in a racemic mixture of enantiomers of a chiral molecule is analyzed. As an example, a racemic mixture (vapor) of left-and right-handed enantiomers of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) molecule is considered. It is shown that biharmonic Raman excitation of the splitted due to the left-right conversion internal rotation levels can be effectively used for inducing optical activity in the initially racemic vapor of H2O2 molecules. An experiment to study this photoinduced optical rotation is discussed.

Unravelling the molecular phenomena of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) through many-body fragmentation dynamics

“…More information regarding these possibilities are elaborated in great detail under supplementary section, geometrical isomerism. Coming to the molecular-chirality of H2O2, a kinematically-complete solution has not yet been reported although there were some earlier theoretical and experimental attempts [16,29]. Hence in this work, it has also been stressed on this character of H2O2 constituting left-and righthanded enantiomers, just as schematically shown in figure (5a).…”

“…Now the question here is, beyond sequential or non-sequential fragmentation dynamics, "Is there any room left in H2O2 that has not been explored from H2O2 3+ breakup?" As a matter of fact, H2O2 has been identified to be the smallest chiral molecule in the universe [3,29]. It also exists as cis-and trans-H2O2 [3,15,16,29].…”

“…As a matter of fact, H2O2 has been identified to be the smallest chiral molecule in the universe [3,29]. It also exists as cis-and trans-H2O2 [3,15,16,29]. Besides this, unambiguously COLTRIMS has recently been proven to be a versatile technique in the investigation on 'chirality' [30,31] that remained as one of the long-standing problems in physics today.…”

Symmetries, Conserved Properties, Tensor Representations, and Irreducible Forms in Molecular Quantum Electrodynamics

“…Consider, as a counterexample, a molecule of hydrogen peroxide, H 2 O 2 ; in its ground electronic state, it has only C 2 rotational symmetry and is therefore chiral in principle, but it is not normally regarded as such-because at common ambient temperatures, where the substance is a liquid, thermal energy is sufficient to provide equilibration between the two oppositely handed forms. Relatively low potential energy barriers must be surmounted for interconversion to occur [71]; in this case, evidence is readily afforded by the significant energy splitting between even and odd parity combinations of the two enantiomeric state functions [72].…”

Laser coherent control of molecular chiral states via entanglement of the rotational and torsional degrees of freedom

“…This is partly due to the intrinsic nature of the chiral transitions-their phase sensitivity to the molecule rotations in free space averaging over which cancels the distillation effect. 14,16 In other words, it reveals in complete suppression of the chiral asymmetry of the field-molecule interaction in the case of rotationally symmetric interaction, unless special efforts to break down this symmetry are undertaken (see the next section).…”