title: Antisymmetric Couplings Enable Direct Observation of Chirality in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy.
abstract: Here we demonstrate that a term in the nuclear spin Hamiltonian, the antisymmetric J-coupling, is fundamentally connected to molecular chirality. We propose and simulate a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiment to observe this interaction and differentiate between enantiomers without adding any additional chiral agent to the sample. The antisymmetric J-coupling may be observed in the presence of molecular orientation by an external electric field. The opposite parity of the antisymmetric coupling tensor and the molecular electric dipole moment yields a sign change of the observed coupling between enantiomers. We show how this sign change influences the phase of the NMR spectrum and may be used to discriminate between enantiomers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of California , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.|Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.
authors.forename: Jonathan P
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0875-8794
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: King
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of California , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.|Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.
authors.forename: Tobias F
authors.initials: TF
authors.lastname: Sjolander
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of California , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.|Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , Berkeley, California 94720, United States.|Helmholtz-Institut Mainz , 55099 Mainz, Germany.
authors.forename: John W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Blanchard