title: Emergence of molecular chirality due to chiral interactions in a biological environment.
abstract: We explore the interplay between tunneling process and chiral interactions in the discrimination of chiral states for an ensemble of molecules in a biological environment. Each molecule is described by an asymmetric double-well potential and the environment is modeled as a bath of harmonic oscillators. We carefully analyze different time-scales appearing in the resulting master equation at both weak- and strong-coupling limits. The corresponding results are accompanied by a set of coupled differential equations characterizing optical activity of the molecules. We show that, at the weak-coupling limit, chiral interactions prohibit the coherent racemization induced by decoherence effects and thus preserve the initial chiral state. At the strong-coupling limit, considering the memory effects of the environment, Markovian behavior is observed at long times.
authors.affiliation: Research Group on Foundations of Quantum Theory and Information, Department of Chemistry, Sharif University of Technology, P.O.Box 11365-9516, Tehran, Iran, tirandaz@ch.sharif.edu.
authors.forename: Arash
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tirandaz
authors.forename: Farhad Taher
authors.initials: FT
authors.lastname: Ghahramani
authors.forename: Afshin
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Shafiee
mesh_terms: D001695:Biology; D008958:Models, Molecular; D055620:Optical Phenomena; D013237:Stereoisomerism