Observation of Rayleigh optical activity for chiral molecules: a new chiroptical tool
Chemical Physics
2026-01-14 v2 Atomic Physics
Biological Physics
Instrumentation and Detectors
Optics
Abstract
By measuring a small circularly polarized component in the scattered light, we report the first observation of Rayleigh optical activity (RayOA) for isotropic samples of chiral molecules, namely the two enantiomers of -pinene in neat liquid form. Our work validates fundamental theoretical predictions made over fifty years ago and expands the chiroptical toolkit.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2508.02696,
title = {Observation of Rayleigh optical activity for chiral molecules: a new chiroptical tool},
author = {Duncan McArthur and Emmanouil I. Alexakis and Andrew R. Puente and Rebecca McGonigle and Andrew J. Love and Prasad L. Polavarapu and Laurence D. Barron and Lewis E. MacKenzie and Aidan S. Arnold and Robert P. Cameron},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.02696},
year = {2026}
}