Nonlinear spectroscopic studies of chiral media

Thesis/Dissertation · Thu May 20 04:00:00 EDT 2004

OSTI ID:827581

Belkin, Mikhail Alexandrovich ^[1]

---

1. LBNL Library

Molecular chirality plays an important role in chemistry, biology, and medicine. Traditional optical techniques for probing chirality, such as circular dichroism and Raman optical activity rely on electric-dipole forbidden transitions. As a result, their intrinsic low sensitivity limits their use to probe bulk chirality rather than chiral surfaces, monolayers or thin films often important for chemical or biological systems. Contrary to the traditional chirality probes, chiral signal in sum-frequency generation (SFG) is electric-dipole allowed both on chiral surface and in chiral bulk making it a much more promising tool for probing molecular chirality. SFG from a chiral medium was first proposed in 1965, but had never been experimentally confirmed until this thesis work was performed. This thesis describes a set of experiments successfully demonstrating that chiral SFG responses from chiral monolayers and liquids are observable. It shows that, with tunable inputs, SFG can be used as a sensitive spectroscopic tool to probe chirality in both electronic and vibrational resonances of chiral molecules. The monolayer sensitivity is feasible in both cases. It also discusses the relevant theoretical models explaining the origin and the strength of the chiral signal in vibrational and electronic SFG spectroscopies.

• Research Organization: Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Director. Office of Science. Office of Basic Energy Sciences (US)
• DOE Contract Number: AC03-76SF00098
• OSTI ID: 827581
• Report Number(s): LBNL--55672
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
BIOLOGY
CHEMISTRY
CHIRALITY
DICHROISM
ENANTIOMORPHS
FORBIDDEN TRANSITIONS
MEDICINE
OPTICAL ACTIVITY
ORIGIN
PROBES
SENSITIVITY
SUM FREQUENCY GENERATION MOLECULAR CHIRALITY CIRCULAR-DICHROISM SPECTROSCOPY SURFACE SPECTROSCOPY VIBRATIONAL SPECTROSCOPY ELECTRONIC SPECTROSCOPY
THIN FILMS