A Relationship between the Molecular Parity-Violation Energy and the Electronic Chirality Measure
Juan J. Aucar, Alessandro Stroppa, Gustavo A. Aucar
Abstract
When the weak forces producing parity-violating effects are taken into account, there is a tiny energy difference between the total electronic energies of two enantiomers (Δ E PV ), which might be the key to understanding the evolution of the biological homochirality. We focus on the electronic chirality measure (ECM), a powerful descriptor based on the electronic charge density, for quantifying the chirality degree of a molecule, in a representative set of chiral molecules, together with their E PV energies. Our results show a novel, strong, and positive correlation between Δ E PV and ECM, supporting a subtle interplay between the weak forces acting within the nuclei of a given molecule and its chirality. These findings suggest that experimental investigations for molecular parity violation detection should consider molecules with ECM values as large as possible and may support that a chiral signature is imprinted on life by fundamental physics via the parity-violating weak interactions.