Abstract
Chirality—the property that distinguishes left- and right-handed forms of matter—underpins diverse functionalities across scales, from micro to macro world. Molecules crucial to biological organisms are often chiral: they come in two non-superimposable mirror-image forms known as enantiomers. Living systems rely on a well-defined enantiomeric excess—a consistent dominance of one handedness—to support biochemical function. Deviations from this balance can signal pathological conditions, making enantiomeric excess a promising biomarker [1]. Yet fast, sensitive, and robust enantio-specific detection remains a major challenge.
We introduce temporal chirality [2]—chirality encoded in the time-dependent trajectories traced by vectors such as electric fields or induced polarizations—as a unifying framework that enables highly efficient enantio-sensitive detection [3]. Synthetic chiral light provides a central example: the Lissajous figure traced by its electric-field vector forms a locally chiral three-dimensional trajectory in time. Light-induced polarization in excited chiral molecules can also exhibit temporal chirality, generating geometric fields that influence photoelectron spin and give rise to new mechanisms of spin–chirality coupling. Together temporal chirality and quantum geometry enable new generation of enantio-sensitive approaches that will be discussed in this talk.
References:
[1] Y. Liu, Z. Wu, D. W. Armstrong, H. Wolosker, Y. Zheng, Nature Reviews Chemistry 7, 355 (2023)
[2] O. Smirnova, Science 389 (6757), 232-233, 2025
[3] D. Ayuso, A.F. Ordonez, O. Smirnova, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 24, 26962, 2022
Anyone interested is welcome to attend.