Vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) spectra of the antisymmetric stretch of azide ligated to the heme of a series of evolutionarily diverse and site-directed mutant hemoglobins and myoglobins are anomalously intense and demonstrate an intriguing sensitivity to subtle protein-ligand interactions. The antisymmetric stretch of the azide ligand covalently bound to the low-spin iron shows an anisot...

Unravelling the main initial dynamics responsible for chiral recognition is a key step in the understanding of many biological processes. However, this challenging task requires a sensitive enantiospecific probe to investigate molecular dynamics on their natural femtosecond time scale. Here we show that, in the gas phase, the ultrafast relaxation dynamics of photoexcited chiral molecules can be...

Nonlinear magnetization dynamics is essential for the operation of numerous spintronic devices ranging from magnetic memory to spin torque microwave generators. Examples are microwave-assisted switching of magnetic structures and the generation of spin currents at low bias fields by high-amplitude ferromagnetic resonance. Here we use X-ray magnetic circular dichroism to determine the number den...

Modern ab initio and multiscale methods enable the simulation of vibrational properties of very large molecules. Within the harmonic approximation, the traditional generation of the spectra based on the force field diagonalization can become inefficient due to the excessive demands on computer time and memory. The present study proposes to avoid completely the matrix diagonalization with a dire...

Circular dichroism (CD), and NMR spectra have been recorded and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have been performed in water and water-trifluoroethanol (TFE) mixed solvent for a synthetic biologically active 13-amino-acid fragment of human fibronectin and two related peptides. The CD results are interpreted on the basis of statistical analyses of MD trajectories and of ensuing calculations ...

Circular dichroism spectra of naturally occurring molecules and also of synthetic chiral arrangements of plasmonic particles often exhibit characteristic bisignate shapes. Such spectra consist of peaks next to dips (or vice versa) and result from the superposition of signals originating from many individual chiral objects oriented randomly in solution. Here we show that by first aligning and th...

The current-induced motion of magnetic domain walls (DWs) confined to nanostructures is of great interest for fundamental studies as well as for technological applications in spintronic devices. Here, we present magnetic images showing the depinning properties of pulse-current-driven domain walls in well-shaped Permalloy nanowires obtained using photoemission electron microscopy combined with x...

Mid-IR vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) and the corresponding Raman optical activity (ROA) spectra of 1-amino-2-propanol and 2-amino-1-propanol in neat solution are compared to yield insight into the dominant structural sensitivity of each technique. The ROA spectra for these isomeric compounds are quite similar while their VCD spectra are substantially different. The contrast between the r...

Diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMSs) are semiconductors alloyed with magnetic elements [1]. The physical properties of these materials can be tuned by both charge and spin, thus, they have great potential of being used in a wide variety of spintronic applications, such as magneto-optical, magneto-electrical, and magneto-transport devices. Spintronics (spin+electronics) is the technology that ...