Detecting Chirality in Molecules by Linearly Polarized Laser Fields

A new scheme for enantiomer differentiation of chiral molecules using a pair of linearly polarized intense ultrashort laser pulses with skewed mutual polarization is presented. The technique relies on the fact that the off-diagonal anisotropic contributions to the electric polarizability tensor for two enantiomers have different signs. Exploiting this property, we are able to excite a coherent unidirectional rotation of two enantiomers with a pi phase difference in the molecular electric dipole moment. The approach is robust and suitable for relatively high temperatures of molecular samples, making it applicable for selective chiral analysis of mixtures, and to chiral molecules with low barriers between enantiomers. As an illustration, we present nanosecond laser-driven dynamics of a tetratomic nonrigid chiral molecule with short-lived chirality. The ultrafast time scale of the proposed technique is well suited to study parity violation in molecular systems in short-lived chiral states.