Refine
Has Fulltext
- yes (1)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (1)
Year of publication
- 2016 (1)
Document Type
- Journal article (1)
Language
- English (1)
Keywords
- amino-acids (1) (remove)
Institute
- Institut für Physikalische und Theoretische Chemie (1) (remove)
EU-Project number / Contract (GA) number
- 646737 (1)
We introduce a general theoretical approach for the simulation of photochemical dynamics under the influence of circularly polarized light to explore the possibility of generating enantiomeric enrichment through polarized-light-selective photochemistry. The method is applied to the simulation of the photolysis of alanine, a prototype chiral amino acid. We show that a systematic enantiomeric enrichment can be obtained depending on the helicity of the circularly polarized light that induces the excited-state photochemistry of alanine. By analyzing the patterns of the photoinduced fragmentation of alanine we find an inducible enantiomeric enrichment up to 1.7%, which is also in good correspondence to the experimental findings. Our method is generally applicable to complex systems and might serve to systematically explore the photochemical origin of homochirality.