Chiral Vector Beams for Topological Enantio-Sensitive Imaging
Abstract
Molecular chiral discrimination is vital across chemistry and life sciences, yet optical approaches remain highly inefficient for small organic molecules. Here we turn vector beams, whose polarization carries a topological charge, into an efficient probe of molecular handedness. We show that the combination of a tightly focused radially polarized beam at the fundamental frequency ω and an azimuthally polarized beam at 2ω creates chiral vector beams, a locally chiral field with structured handedness. Using state-of-the-art computational modeling in the chiral molecule carvone, we show that the nonlinear response (notably sum-frequency generation) of randomly oriented chiral molecules to this chiral vector beam captures the fields' local handedness and is highly enantio-sensitive. The two enantiomers emit light at frequency 3ω with topological ring structures of different divergence, and thus the molecular handedness can be read out directly from the ring radius. The signal inherits the Poincaré index of the driving field, opening up new ways to robust, ultrafast, and and all-optical chiral discrimination.
Related
- Probing chiral topological order of the Kitaev honeycomb on a trapped ion processor
- Vector chiral order and dynamical quantum phase transitions in an Ising chain with dimerized anisotropic Gamma interaction
- Multipartite entanglement hidden in vector-chiral correlations of spin-1/2 chains
- Grain-Boundary Scattering between Chiral Domains in Chiral Topological Semimetal CoSi
- Logarithmic transport at topological phase transitions of one-dimensional chiral quantum systems
BibTeX
@misc{rodriguez2026chiral,
title = {{Chiral Vector Beams for Topological Enantio-Sensitive Imaging}},
author = {A. Rodriguez and J. Edginton and A. Löhr and J. Terentjevas and P. Vindel-Zandbergen and A. Ordóñez and J. Vogwell and O. Smirnova and D. Ayuso and L. Rego},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.17111},
eprint = {2610.17111},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.17111},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Chiral Vector Beams for Topological Enantio-Sensitive Imaging
AU - A. Rodriguez
AU - J. Edginton
AU - A. Löhr
AU - J. Terentjevas
AU - P. Vindel-Zandbergen
AU - A. Ordóñez
AU - J. Vogwell
AU - O. Smirnova
AU - D. Ayuso
AU - L. Rego
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/12
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.17111
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.17111
AB - Molecular chiral discrimination is vital across chemistry and life sciences, yet optical approaches remain highly inefficient for small organic molecules. Here we turn vector beams, whose polarization carries a topological charge, into an efficient probe of molecular handedness. We show that the combination of a tightly focused radially polarized beam at the fundamental frequency ω and an azimuthally polarized beam at 2ω creates chiral vector beams, a locally chiral field with structured handedness. Using state-of-the-art computational modeling in the chiral molecule carvone, we show that the nonlinear response (notably sum-frequency generation) of randomly oriented chiral molecules to this chiral vector beam captures the fields' local handedness and is highly enantio-sensitive. The two enantiomers emit light at frequency 3ω with topological ring structures of different divergence, and thus the molecular handedness can be read out directly from the ring radius. The signal inherits the Poincaré index of the driving field, opening up new ways to robust, ultrafast, and and all-optical chiral discrimination.
ER -