Near-complete chiral selection in rotational quantum states

Abstract

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. Achieving full enantiomer-specific state transfer is a key requirement for such applications. Using tailored microwave fields, a chosen rotational state can be enriched for a selected enantiomer, even starting from a racemic mixture. 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. Although perfect state-specific enantiomeric enrichment is theoretically feasible, achieving the required experimental conditions seemed unrealistic. Here, we realize near-ideal conditions, overcoming both the limitations of thermal population and spatial degeneracy in rotational states. We achieve over 92% enantiomer-specific state transfer efficiency using enantiopure samples. This indicates 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. Our work integrates the control over internal quantum states with molecular chirality, thus expanding the field of state-selective molecular beams studies to include chiral research.

A potential origin of homochirality in living organisms is the parity-violating energy difference between enantiomers. Here, the authors realize a technique to control rotational states of chiral molecules using microwave and ultraviolet radiation.