Instituto de Física Fundamental (CSIC), Serrano 123, 28006 Madrid, Spain.
Phys Chem Chem Phys. 2011 Jan 21;13(3):806-10. doi: 10.1039/c0cp00907e. Epub 2010 Oct 15.
Interactions which do not conserve parity might influence chiral compounds giving rise to a parity violating energy difference (PVED) that might have affected the evolution towards homochirality. However, this tiny effect predicted by electroweak-quantum chemistry calculations is easily masked by thermal effects, making it desirable to reach cold regimes in the laboratory. As an alternative route to the detection of the PVED, we study a simplified model of Bose-Einstein condensation of a sample of non-interacting chiral molecules, showing that it leads to a nonzero optical activity of the condensate and also to a subcritical temperature in the heat capacity, due to the internal structure of the molecule characterized by tunneling and parity violation. This predicted singular behavior found for the specific heat, below the condensation temperature, might shed some light on the existence of the thus far elusive PVED between enantiomers.
非守恒宇称相互作用可能会影响手性化合物,导致宇称破缺能量差(PVED),从而可能影响手性的进化。然而,电弱量子化学计算预测的这种微小效应很容易被热效应掩盖,因此在实验室中达到低温状态是可取的。作为检测 PVED 的替代途径,我们研究了非相互作用手性分子样品的玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚的简化模型,结果表明,由于分子的内部结构(包括隧穿和宇称破坏),它会导致凝聚物的非零旋光性和热容的亚临界温度。在低于凝聚温度的情况下,预测出的比热的奇异行为可能会揭示手性对映体之间迄今难以捉摸的 PVED 的存在。