The helical distribution of the electronic density in chiral molecules, such as DNA and bacteriorhodopsin, has been suggested to induce a spin-orbit coupling interaction that may lead to the so-called chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect. Key ingredients for the theoretical modelling are, in this context, the helically shaped potential of the molecule and, concomitantly, a Rashba-like spin-orbit coupling due to the appearance of a magnetic field in the electron reference frame. Symmetries of these models clearly play a crucial role in explaining the observed effect, but a thorough analysis has been largely ignored in the literature. In this work, we present a study of these symmetries and how they can be exploited to enhance chiral-induced spin selectivity in helical molecular systems.
@article{arxiv.1912.13271,
title = {Spin-polarized electron transmission in DNA-like systems},
author = {Miguel A. Sierra and David Sanchez and Rafael Gutierrez and Gianaurelio Cuniberti and Francisco Dominguez-Adame and Elena Diaz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.13271},
year = {2020}
}