Probing chirality with a femtosecond reaction microscope

Abstract

Detection of molecular chirality with high sensitivity and selectivity is important for many analytical and practical applications. Photoionization has emerged as a very sensitive probe of chirality in molecules. We show here that a table top setup with a femtosecond laser and a single imaging detector for both photoelectrons and photoions enables detection of chirality up to 3 orders of magnitude better than the existing conventional absorption based techniques.