On the effect of a radiation field in modifying the intermolecular interaction between two chiral molecules.

The change in the mutual energy of interaction between a pair of chiral molecules coupled via the exchange of a single virtual photon and in the presence of an electromagnetic field is calculated using nonrelativistic quantum electrodynamics. The particular viewpoint adopted is one that has an intuitive physical appeal and resembles a classical treatment. It involves the coupling of electric and magnetic dipole moments induced at each center by the incident radiation field to the resonant dipole-dipole interaction tensor. The energy shift is evaluated for fixed as well as random orientations of the molecular pair with respect to the direction of propagation of the field. A complete polarization analysis is carried out for the former situation by examining the effect of incident radiation that is linearly or circularly polarized and traveling in a direction that is parallel or perpendicular to the intermolecular distance vector. After tumble averaging, all polarization dependence of the energy shift vanishes. In both cases the interaction energy is directly proportional to the irradiance of the applied field, and is discriminatory, changing sign when one optically active species is replaced by its enantiomer. The asymptotic behavior of the energy shift at the limits of large and small separations is also studied.