Chiral light-matter interations

Chirality is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature, appearing on all length scales from the smallest physical constituents of matter (in fundamental particles), up to the largest scales of the universe (in galaxies). In the nanometric scale, chirality manifests in chiral materials and chiral molecules, which include the vast majority of biomolecules such as DNA and amino acids. Understanding the origin of chirality is an extremely interesting problem in the natural sciences – it remains unclear to this day why a certain handedness of molecules is preferred (or more widespread) over the other. Moreover, resolving the handedness of chiral molecules is an especially important task for biochemistry and drug design, since our bodies react differently to different handedness of drugs. It is however extremely difficult, because mirror pairs of chiral molecules (enantiomers) behave completely identically to one another except when interacting with another chiral object. Chiroptical methods where chiral molecules interact with chiral light are the best approaches to date for detecting chirality, but they are extremely inefficient as they rely on weak magnetic-dipole interactions.

In the last two decades the field has undergone a massive expansion with multiple seminal works predicting electric-dipole allowed chiral signals in a variety of physical set-ups and mechanisms.

We wish to develop a more complete understanding of electric-dipole induced chiral signals and chirality-selective interactions, while formulating novel highly-selective chirality-detection techniques that are ultrafast time-resolved. We are especially interested in the application of locally-chiral light in nonlinear optics, in photoemission spectroscopy, and ultrafast dynamics, as well as any connections with phenomena in non-molecular systems.

Relevant publications:

Moitra, Konecny, Kadek, Neufeld, Rubio, Repisky, “Light-induced persistent electronic chirality in achiral molecules probed with transient absorption circular dichroism spectroscopy”, J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 16, 9210-9216 (2025), cover paper.
Lerner, Even Tsur, Neufeld, Fleischer, Cohen, “Reflection parity and space-time parity photonic conservation laws in parametric nonlinear optics”, Phys. Rev. Research 6, L042034 (2024).
Habibović*, Hamilton*, Neufeld*, Rego*, "Emerging tailored light sources for studying chirality and symmetry", Nat. Rev. Phys. 6, 663-675 (2024).
Neufeld, Cohen, “Unambiguous definition of handedness for locally-chiral light”, Phys. Rev. A 105, 023514 (2022), Editor’s Suggestion.
Neufeld, Wengrowicz, Peleg, Rubio, Cohen, “Detecting multiple chirality centers in chiral molecules with high harmonic generation”, Opt. Express 30, 3729-3740 (2022).
Neufeld, Hübener, Rubio, De Giovannini, “Strong chiral dichroism and enantiopurification in above-threshold ionization with locally chiral light”, Phys. Rev. Research 3, L032006 (2021).
Neufeld, Even Tzur, Cohen, “Degree of chirality of electromagnetic fields and maximally chiral light”, Phys. Rev. A 101, 053831 (2020).
Ayuso*, Neufeld*, Ordonez, Decleva, Lerner, Cohen, Ivanov, Smirnova, “Synthetic chiral light for efficient control of chiral light-matter interaction”, Nat. Photon. 13, 866-871 (2019).
Neufeld*, Ayuso*, Decleva, Ivanov, Smirnova, Cohen, “Ultrasensitive chiral spectroscopy by dynamical symmetry breaking in high harmonic generation”, Phys. Rev. X 9, 031002 (2019).
Neufeld, Cohen, “Optical chirality in nonlinear optics: application to high harmonic generation”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 133206 (2018).
Neufeld, Cohen, “Background-free measurement of ring currents by symmetry breaking high harmonic spectroscopy”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 103202 (2019), Editor’s suggestion.

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