Abstract
The 1884 suggestion of Pierre Curie (1859–1906) that the type of dissymmetry shown by collinear electric and magnetic fields may induce an enantiomeric excess, in a chemical reaction that would otherwise produce a racemic mixture, is explored in the context of fundamental symmetry arguments. Curie’s arrangement exhibits false chirality (time-noninvariant enantiomorphism), and so it may not induce absolute enantioselection (ae) in a process that has reached thermodynamic equilibrium, since it does not lift the degeneracy of chiral enantiomers. However, it may do so in far-from-equilibrium processes via a breakdown in microscopic reversibility analogous to that observed in elementary particle processes under the influence of CP violation, the associated force possessing false chirality with respect to CP enantiomorphism. In contrast, an influence like circularly polarized light exhibiting true chirality (time-invariant enantiomorphism) lifts the degeneracy of enantiomers, and so may induce ae in all circumstances. Although to date, ae has not been observed under the influence of Curie’s arrangement of collinear electric and magnetic fields, it is argued that two different experiments have now demonstrated ae under a falsely chiral influence in systems far from equilibrium, namely in a spinning sample under a gravitational field, and in the separation of enantiomers at a ferromagnetic surface.
Highlights
The term “chirality”, meaning handedness, was first introduced into science in the late nineteenth century by Lord Kelvin (William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, 1824–1907) to describe a figure “if its image in a plane mirror, ideally realized, cannot be brought to coincide with itself” [1]
Pierre Curie’s pioneering work in the late nineteenth century on the electric and magnetic properties of matter led to many important discoveries and to the ideas of symmetry in physical laws, which culminated in the enunciation of an essential principle relating the symmetry of ‘effects’ to the symmetry of ‘causes’ [4,5]
From early on Lord Kelvin ( William Thomson) appreciated that there is a fundamental difference between the two types of optical rotation: he suggested that natural rotation is probably due to a spiral heterogeneousness in the optically active substance over distances comparable to the optical wavelengths; whereas Faraday rotation originates in particles set in circular motion by the magnetic field [18]
Summary
The term “chirality”, meaning handedness, was first introduced into science in the late nineteenth century by Lord Kelvin (William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, 1824–1907) to describe a figure “if its image in a plane mirror, ideally realized, cannot be brought to coincide with itself” [1]. He called the two distinguishable mirror‐image forms “chiroids”; but today we use the term “enantiomers” in the case of chiral molecules. Inclusion of charge conjugation C (particle–antiparticle exchange) enables productive analogies to be established between the physics of chiral molecules and elementary particles
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