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How Important is Parity Violation for Molecular and Biomolecular Chirality?
Author(s) -
Quack Martin
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
angewandte chemie international edition
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.831
H-Index - 550
eISSN - 1521-3773
pISSN - 1433-7851
DOI - 10.1002/anie.200290005
Subject(s) - homochirality , chirality (physics) , electroweak interaction , parity (physics) , physics , quantum , particle physics , theoretical physics , enantiomer , quantum mechanics , chemistry , chiral symmetry , quantum chromodynamics , stereochemistry , nambu–jona lasinio model
Parity violation leads to energy differences Δ pv H $\rm{_{0}^{\ominus }}$ = N A Δ pv E of enantiomers in the femtojoule to picojoule per mole range. Recently introduced methods of electroweak quantum chemistry predict such energy differences to be one to two orders of magnitude larger than previously accepted—but still very small. How can such small energies be measured and what are the consequences for our understanding of molecular chirality, biomolecular homochirality, and perhaps fundamental physics? The review gives some tentative answers to these questions. We discuss the current status of theory and some of the current experimental approaches.