Anomalous circular dichroism in high harmonic generation of stereoisomers with two chiral centers.
When a molecule has more than one chiral center, it can be either a chiral molecule or a meso isomer. High harmonic generation (HHG) of stereoisomers with two chiral centers driven by circularly polarized (CP) laser pulses is investigated. Counterintuitively, it is found that the HHG exhibits prominent circular dichroism for the meso isomer, while the harmonic spectra with left and right CP laser pulses are nearly the same for the chiral isomers. We show that the anomalous circular dichroism is attributed to the characteristic recollision dynamics of HHG. This feature makes the HHG a promising tool to discriminate the meso isomer and racemic mixture, where no optical activity can be found in both cases. Similar dichroism responses are also found by applying the counter-rotating bicircular laser pulses.
Xiaosong
X
Zhu
Xi
X
Liu
Pengfei
P
Lan
Dian
D
Wang
Qingbin
Q
Zhang
Wei
W
Li
Peixiang
P
Lu