Project B1

Project Lead: Reinhard Dörner (Goethe University Frankfurt)

The goal of this project is to probe and induce chirality in molecules that have an achiral equilibrium structure. In planar molecules, we aim to show by Coulomb Explosion Imaging and Photoelectron Circular Dichroism (PECD) that, on the level of a single molecule, each individual molecule is (instantaneously) chiral due to zero point vibrational motion in the ground state. For formic acid and molecules with equivalent atoms, we will use the photoelectron recoil momentum from photoionization by 20-40 keV photons to induce chirality by imparting a directional kick on individual atomic nuclei. This momentum serves to steer the dissociation process and to selectively break otherwise equal bonds, thereby inducing chirality.