Mainz 2026 – scientific programme
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MO: Fachverband Molekülphysik
MO 19: Poster – Contributions to SYLC
MO 19.2: Poster
Wednesday, March 4, 2026, 17:00–19:00, Philo 1. OG
Ultrafast TACOS — •Justas Terentjevas1,2, Patricia Vindel-Zandbergen3, Laura Rego2,4,5, Felipe Morales1, Andrés Ordóñez2, Olga Smirnova1,6, and David Ayuso1,2 — 1Max-Born-Institut, 12489 Berlin, Germany — 2Department of Physics, Imperial College London, SW7 2BW London, UK — 3Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York 10003, New York, USA — 4Instituto Madrileno de Estudios Avanzados en Nanociencia (IMDEA Nano), Cantoblanco 28049, Madrid, Spain — 5Departamento de Quimica, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain — 6Technische Universitat Berlin, 10623 Berlin, Germany
We introduce TACOS - Terahertz-Assisted Chiro-Optical Spectroscopy - a novel approach for ultrafast chiral recognition. We show that a terahertz field can electronically orient a medium of randomly oriented chiral molecules to twist the nonlinear response to an ultrashort optical pulse in a highly enantiosensitive manner. This process leads to the emission of elliptically polarised light at new optical frequencies that records the molecular handedness via purely electric-dipole interactions. The long wavelength and period of the terahertz pulse enable spatial coherence across the interaction region and a substantial degree of electronic orientation during the interaction of the molecules with the ultrashort optical pulse. TACOS does not require optical carrier-envelope phase stability or vacuum conditions, thus opening new avenues for ultrafast and highly efficient chiral sensing and manipulation.
Keywords: Chiral sensing; Ultrafast; THz; Optics; Novel