Mainz 2026 – scientific programme

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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik

MO 11: Poster – Chirality

MO 11.3: Poster

Tuesday, March 3, 2026, 17:00–19:00, Philo 1. OG

Controlling the orientational degeneracy of rotational states in chiral molecules — •Elahe Abdiha, Shilpa Yadav, Sejun An, JuHyeon Lee, Boris G. Sartakov, Gerard Meijer, and Sandra Eibenberger-Arias — Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft; Berlin, 14195, Germany

We present recent experimental advances towards full enantiomer-specific control of the quantum states of chiral molecules using enantiomer-specific state transfer (ESST). Early studies on ESST reported only modest state-specific enantiomeric enrichment, limited to a few percent [1,2]. The main limitations are due to the thermal population of rotational states and their spatial degeneracy. Our group has overcome the limitation due to thermal population and achieved near-complete control of the enantiomers in a triad of rotational states containing the absolute ground state [3]. For this, we developed a new approach combining ultraviolet and microwave radiation to remove population from two out of three rotational states before applying ESST. In our recent work, we address the limitation due to spatial degeneracy when applying ESST to rotational states not including the absolute ground state. Here, M-state dependent Rabi frequencies impede the overall transfer efficiency when employing conventional pulse schemes. We incorporate theoretically tailored pulse schemes [4] and demonstrate enhanced control despite degeneracy. [1] Eibenberger et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 123002 (2017) [2] Pérez et al. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 56, 12512 (2017) [3] Lee et al. Nat. Commun. 15, 7441 (2024) [4] Leibscher et al. Commun. Phys. 5, 110 (2022).

Keywords: Chiral molecules; Quantum control