Mainz 2017 – scientific programme

Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help

MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik

MO 17: Experimental Techniques

MO 17.5: Talk

Friday, March 10, 2017, 12:15–12:30, N 6

Signal reversing cavity-based polarimetry: Measuring Chirality and Atomic Parity Nonconservation — •Alexandros K. Spiliotis^1,2, Dimitrios Sofikitis¹, Georgios E. Katsoprinakis¹, and T. Peter Rakitzis¹ — ¹Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas, 71110 Heraklion, Greece — ²Department of Physics, University of Crete, 71003 Heraklion, Greece

Chirality is a fundamental property of life. Thus, chiral sensing and analysis is of fundamental importance in a number of scientific fields, ranging from pharmacology to fundamental physics and chemistry. The main constraint in the measurement of chiral signals is that they are typically very small and are thus limited by spurious birefringence and poor background subtraction procedures. Recently, our group has introduced a new cavity-based technique, which aims to overcome all these problems. The technique uses an optical cavity, which enhances the Optical Rotation(OR) signals by the number of cavity passes (typically ~1000). A number of signal reversals are incorporated in this method, which allow absolute measurements of chiral signals, without the need for background subtraction; the reversals suppress the spurious background birefringence, thus allowing the measurement of relatively small OR. This cavity-based setup has been proposed as a low-energy, table-top test of the Standard Model. It can be used for the detection of Atomic Parity nonconservation(PNC), to precisely measure the cavity-enhanced parity-nonconserving OR of molecular transitions, in molecules such as Xe and Hg and I2.