Absolute asymmetric synthesis from an isotropic racemic mixture of chiral molecules with the help of their laser orientation-dependent selection

Abstract

We analyzed the absolute asymmetric synthesis (AAS) of enantiomers from an isotropic racemic mixture of chiral molecules, which employs the laser electrodipole interaction, and revealed a set of basic symmetry-based conditions on the parameters of field-molecule interaction. Using these conditions, we developed a novel scenario of the AAS (through selective photodestruction of the enantiomers of a given type) based on the joint action of the strong multicomponent femtosecond and picosecond laser pulses. Key mechanism of this scenario is the partly modified scheme of laser orientation-dependent selection of molecules proposed by us earlier [D. V. Zhdanov et al., JETP 130, 387 (2006)]. Calculations made on example of chiral molecule SiHNaClF show rather high efficiency and stability of the proposed AAS scenario with respect to the parameters of the incident laser pulses and even feasibility of its realization at room temperature.