Biochemical processes are known to utilize only one enantiomer, e.g. amino acids used by terrestrial life are generally the left-handed version. The concepts of chirality, optical activity and chiral enrichment are explored in the context of the origin of life in the universe before Earth. Chirality as a feature of terrestrial life suggests neither a special place for local development of homoc...

We suggest that electromagnetic chirality, generally displayed by 3D or 2D complex chiral structures, can occur in 1D patterned composites whose components are achiral. This feature is highly unexpected in a 1D system which is geometrically achiral since its mirror image can always be superposed onto it by a 180 deg rotation. We analytically evaluate from first principles the bianisotropic resp...

A review is given of the optical properties of isotropic chiral media, based on the symmetrized constitutive relations of Condon. The review includes discussion of wave propagation in chiral media, and derivation of the reflection and transmission amplitudes of an isotropic optically active medium, and of a layer resting on a substrate. Boundary conditions and energy conservation relations are ...

Chirality of materials are known to affect optical, magnetic and electric properties, causing a variety of nontrivial phenomena such as circular dichiroism for chiral molecules, magnetic Skyrmions in chiral magnets and nonreciprocal carrier transport in chiral conductors. On the other hand, effect of chirality on superconducting transport has not been known. Here we report the nonreciprocity of...

Dilute aqueous solutions of anionic meso-4-sulfonatophenyl-porphyrin (TPPS) extract zinc(ii) ions from glass or quartz surfaces at room temperature and efficiently form the corresponding metal complex (ZnTPPS). The partial or complete formation of ZnTPPS has been probed by UV/Vis spectroscopy and both static and time-resolved fluorescence. The source of zinc(ii) ions has been clearly identified...

Laser-assisted enantio-conversion is an ambitious issue related to chiral molecules in the atomic, molecular, and optical physics. The theoretical laser-distillation method had been proposed realize based on a four-level double-$\Delta$ model of two degenerated ground states achiral excited states. Here, we re-investigate improve so that mixture can be converted enantiopure sample desired chira...

The studying of how twisted light interacts with chiral matter on the nanoscale is paramount for tackling the challenging task of optomechanical separation of nanoparticle enantiomers, whose solution can revolutionize the entire pharmaceutical industry. Here we calculate optical forces and torques exerted on chiral nanoparticles by Laguerre-Gaussian beams carrying a topological charge. We show ...

Despite its deceptive simplicity, few concepts have more fundamental implications than chirality, from the therapeutic activity of drugs to the fundamental forces of nature. In magnetic materials, chirality gives rise to unconventional phenomena such as the anomalous Hall effect and multiferroicity, taking an enhanced flavour in the so-called spin-liquid phases where magnetic disorder prevails....

Optical absorption is the most fundamental optical property characterizing light-matter interactions in materials and can be most readily compared with theoretical predictions. However, determination of optical absorption cross-section of individual nanostructures is experimentally challenging due to the small extinction signal using conventional transmission measurements. Recently, dramatic in...

Induced resonance Raman optical activity (IRROA) proved to be a very sensitive method to detect molecular chirality. It is exhibited, for example, by complexes of lanthanides with chiral alcohols or ketones. So far, the phenomenon has not been understood at a quantitative level. To elucidate its mechanisms and to correctly relate the spectra to the structure, a transition polarizability model (...