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arXiv:2504.03344 · Physical Review A

Chiral environment effects on the dynamics of a central chiral molecule

Daniel Martínez-Gil, Pedro Bargueño, Salvador Miret-Artés

Published Jul 30, 2025• 1 citation
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Abstract

In this work, we develop a system plus environment approach for interacting chiral molecules under a quantum-classical description of the spin-spin model using a Caldeira-Leggett-like coupling. After presenting the interacting model, we show that a long-ranged parity-nonconserving interaction, encoded within a nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation, produces an energy difference between the two enantiomers of the central chiral molecule when it interacts with a chiral environment. Three examples of such interactions are considered, with particular focus on ${Z}^{0}$-photon vacuum polarization. Finally, we reveal a chirality transmission effect phenomenon, where the time-averaged population difference of the central molecule is amplified when the chiral asymmetry of the environment is considered.

DOI
10.1103/x577-1nzd

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In this review, the concepts of quantum tunneling and parity violation are introduced in the context of chiral molecules. A particle moving in a double well potential provides a good model to study the behavior of chiral molecules, where the left well and right well represent the L and R enantiomers, respectively. If the model considers the quantum behavior of matter, the concept of quantum tunneling emerges, giving place to stereomutation dynamics between left- and right-handed chiral molecules. Parity-violating interactions, like the electroweak one, can be also considered, making possible the existence of an energy difference between the L and R enantiomers, the so-called parity-violating energy difference (PVED). Here we provide a brief account of some theoretical methods usually employed to calculate this PVED, also commenting on relevant experiments devoted to experimentally detect the aforementioned PVED in chiral molecules. Finally, we comment on some ways of solving the so-called Hund’s paradox, with emphasis on mean-field theory and decoherence.
We propose a theoretical mechanism to indirectly detect the small parity-violating energy difference (PVED) between chiral enantiomers through a macroscopic enantiomeric excess observed in an ultracold gas. We consider that chiral molecules are formed resonantly via ultracold collisions of achiral diatomic molecules, with PVED inducing a slight asymmetry in the resonance energies of right- and left-handed configurations. After formation, chiral molecules evolve within a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), incorporating nonlinear interactions, tunneling between enantiomeric states, intrinsic PVED, and thermal conversion rates. These collective dynamics enable amplification of the microscopic bias into a global population imbalance. Using coupled rate equations, we show that, under realistic regimes, a complete enantiomeric excess can be achieved even for extremely small intrinsic asymmetries. We illustrate the model with concrete examples (HSOH, H2_22​Se2_22​, H2_22​Te2_22​), predicting observable enantiomeric excesses under plausible experimental conditions. We also consider non-PVED effects that could be amplified under the proposed mechanism, including electric and magnetic fields as well as thermal fluctuations, the latter being illustrated through the aforementioned molecular examples. Overall, our results suggest that ultracold physics could provide a new pathway to probe molecular parity violation, a fundamental weak effect that remains experimentally undetected.
In order to explore parity violating effects in chiral molecules, of interest in some models of evolution towards homochirality, quantum stochastic resonance (QSR) is studied for the population difference between the two enantiomers of a chiral molecule (hence for the optical activity of the sample), under low viscous friction and in the deep quantum regime. The molecule is described by a two-state model in an asymmetric double well potential where the asymmetry is given by the known predicted parity violating energy difference (PVED) between enantiomers. In the linear response to an external driving field that lowers and rises alternatively each one of the minima of the well, a signal of QSR is predicted only in the case that the PVED is different from zero, the resonance condition being independent on tunneling between the two enantiomers. It is shown that, at resonance, the fluctuations of the first order contribution to the internal energy are zero. Due to the small value of the PVED, the resonance would occur in the ultracold regime. Some proposals concerning the external driving field are suggested.
We study the tunnel dynamics of a chiral molecule between its left (L) and right (R) conformations, under the global effect of collisional decoherence together with the effect of a mean-field generated by the environment where an energetic difference, K, between homochiral and heterochiral interactions is assumed. We show that this decoherence leads unavoidably to equal populations of the L and R chiral conformations even for a high enough value of K which tends to keep localized an initial chiral state. However, we also show that K contributes to the stabilization of an initial L or R state for times that could be many orders of magnitude larger than the tunneling time, in the case the decoherence rate is much greater than the tunneling rate. In this case, an estimation of this stabilization time and a critical tunneling time is made. Even in the case in which the tunneling rate is greater than the decoherence rate, the effect of K is to keep localized the initial chiral state for times greater than the tunneling time. A possible slight chiral asymmetry is also considered.
Abstract We examine the dynamics of the chiral states of chiral molecules with high tunneling rates in dilute and condensed phases in the context of time-dependent perturbation theory. The chiral molecule is effectively described by an asymmetric double-well potential, whose asymmetry is a measure of chiral interactions. The dilute and condensed phases are conjointly described by a collection of harmonic oscillators but with temperature-dependent sub-ohmic and temperature-independent ohmic spectral densities, respectively. We examine our method quantitatively by applying the dynamics to an isotopic ammonia molecule, NHDT, in an inert background gas (as the dilute phase) and in water (as the condensed phase). As the different spectral densities imply, the extension of the dynamics from the dilute phase to the condensed phase is not trivial. While the dynamics in the dilute phase leads to racemization, the chiral interactions in the condensed phase induce the quantum Zeno effect. Moreover, contrary to the condensed phase, the short-time dynamics in the dilute phase is sensitive to the initial state of the chiral molecule and to the strength of the coupling between the molecule and the environment.
Central spin models, where a single spinful particle interacts with a spin environment, find wide application in quantum information technology and can be used to describe, e.g., the decoherence of a qubit over time. We propose a method of realizing an ultracold quantum simulator of a central spin model with XXXXXX (spin-exchanging) interactions. The proposed system consists of a single Rydberg atom (central spin) and surrounding polar molecules (bath spins), coupled to each other via dipole-dipole interactions. By mapping internal particle states to spin states, spin-exchanging interactions can be simulated. As an example system geometry, we consider a ring-shaped arrangement of bath spins and show how it allows us to exact precise control over the interaction strengths. We numerically analyze two example dynamical scenarios which can be simulated in this setup: a decay of central spin polarization, which can represent qubit decoherence in a disordered environment, and a transfer of an input spin state to a specific output spin, which can represent the transmission of a single bit across a quantum network. We demonstrate that this setup allows us to realize a central spin model with highly tunable parameters and geometry for applications in quantum science and technology.