Journal
NATURE PHYSICS
Volume 11, Issue 1, Pages 69-74Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/NPHYS3152
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Funding
- European Research Council through the AdG MolNanoMaS [267746]
- ESRF [HE-3896, HC-972]
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Magneto-chiral dichroism is a non-reciprocal-that is, directional-effect observed in magnetized chiral systems, featuring an unbalanced absorption of unpolarized light depending on the direction of the magnetization. Despite the fundamental interest in a phenomenon breaking both parity and time-reversal symmetries, magneto-chiral dichroism is one of the least investigated aspects of light-matter interaction most likely because of the weakness of the effect in most reported experiments. Here we have exploited the element selectivity of hard X-ray radiation to investigate the magneto-chiral properties of enantiopure crystals of two isostructural molecular helicoidal chains comprising either cobalt(II) or manganese(II) ions. A strong magneto-chiral dichroism, with Kuhn asymmetry of the order of a few per cent, has been observed in the cobalt chains system, whereas it is practically absent for the manganese derivative. The spectral features of the X-ray magneto-chiral dichroism signal differ significantly from the natural and magnetic dichroic contributions and have been rationalized here using the multipolar expansion of matter-radiation interaction.
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