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arXiv · 1407.3998

Emergence of molecular chirality due to chiral interactions in a biological environment

Arash Tirandaz·Farhad Taher Ghahramani·Afshin Shafiee
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Abstract

We explore the interplay between tunneling process and chiral interactions in the discrimination of chiral states for an ensemble of molecules in a biological environment. Each molecule is described by an asymmetric double-well potential and the environment is modeled as a bath of harmonic oscillators. We carefully analyze different time-scales appearing in the resulting master equation at both weak- and strong-coupling limits. The corresponding results are accompanied by a set of coupled differential equations characterizing optical activity of the molecules. We show that, at the weak-coupling limit, chiral interactions prohibit the coherent racemization induced by decoherence effects and thus preserve the initial chiral state. At the strong-coupling limit, considering the memory effects of the environment, Markovian behavior is observed at long times.

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Arash Tirandaz, Farhad Taher Ghahramani, Afshin Shafiee. 2014-07-12. Emergence of molecular chirality due to chiral interactions in a biological environment. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10867-014-9356-x

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