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Mirror symmetry is among the most fundamental concepts of physics and itsspontaneous breaking at the molecular level allows chiral molecules to exist intwo enantiomers that are mirror images of each other. The majority ofchiro-optical effects routinely used to detect enantiomers in mixtures, ascircular dichroism, relies on chiral sensitivity to photon circularpolarization, thus not harnessing the full potentials of mirror symmetrybreaking which also involves the radiation spatial profile. Here we show thatthe parity indefiniteness of the electromagnetic field interacting with chiralmatter supports mirror optical activity, a novel chiro-optical effect where achiral film, once probed by the mirror symmetric field of a nanoemitter,produces a near field whose spatial profile has broken mirror symmetry. Thedetection of near field dissymmetry provides an highly efficient chiral sensingtechnique, thus opening novel avenues to devising nanonophotonic schemes forultra-efficient chiral discrimination of picogram quantities of molecules. Wespecialize the technique to nano-films with infrared chirality by using a swiftelectron in aloof configuration as the nanoemitter and an off-axis transparentconductor nanoparticle as the near field probe; the spatial dissymmetry factorof nanoparticle cathodoluminescence is one order of magnitude larger thancircular dichroism, which is further enhanced to two orders if an additionalgraphene sheet is deposited on the film interface.

Mirror optical activity: efficient chiral sensing from electromagnetic parity indefiniteness