Progress toward a first observation of parity violation in chiral molecules by high-resolution laser spectroscopy

Benoît Darquié (1) , Clara Stoeffler (1) , Alexander Shelkovnikov (1, 2) , Christophe Daussy (1) , Anne Amy-Klein (1) , Christian Chardonnet (1) , Samia Zrig (3) , Laure Guy (4) , Jeanne Crassous (3) , Pascale Soulard (5) , Pierre Asselin (5) , Therese R. Huet (6) , Peter Schwerdtfeger (7) , Radovan Bast (8) , Trond Saue (9)

1 LPL - Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers
2 LPI RAS - P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences [Moscow]
3 ISCR - Institut des Sciences Chimiques de Rennes
4 LC - Laboratoire de Chimie - UMR5182
5 LADIR - Laboratoire de Dynamique Interactions et Réactivité
6 PhLAM - Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers, Atomes et Molécules - UMR 8523
7 CTCP - Centre for Theoretical Chemistry and Physics
8 CTCC - Centre for Theoretical and Computational Chemistry
9 Institut de Chimie de Strasbourg

Parity violation (PV) effects in chiral molecules have so far never been experimentally observed. To take this challenge up, a consortium of physicists, chemists, theoreticians and spectroscopists has been established and aims at measuring PV energy differences between two enantiomers by using high-resolution laser spectroscopy. In this article, we present our common strategy to reach this goal, the progress accomplished in the diverse areas, and point out directions for future PV observations. The work of André Collet on bromochlorofluoromethane enantiomers, their synthesis and their chiral recognition by cryptophanes made feasible the first generation of experiments presented in this paper.

Mots clés: supersonic molecular beams; rotational-vibrational spectroscopy; chiral transition metal complexes; chiral halogenomethanes; relativistic calculations; parity violation; ultra high-resolution laser spectroscopy

Domaines: Physique Atomique [physics.atom-ph]; Chimie-Physique [physics.chem-ph]; Physique Quantique [quant-ph]; Chimie de coordination; Chimie théorique et/ou physique

Benoît Darquié, Clara Stoeffler, Alexander Shelkovnikov, Christophe Daussy, Anne Amy-Klein, et al.. Progress toward a first observation of parity violation in chiral molecules by high-resolution laser spectroscopy. Chirality, 2010, 22 (10), pp.870-884. ⟨10.1002/chir.20911⟩. ⟨hal-00503220⟩