On the determination of the diagonal components of the optical activity tensor in chiral molecules

It is shown that the diagonal components of the mixed electric-magnetic dipole polarizability tensor, used to rationalize the optical rotatory power of chiral molecules, are origin independent, if they are referred to the coordinate system defined by the eigenvectors of the dynamic electric dipole polarizability, for a given value ω of the frequency of a monochromatic wave impinging on an ordered sample. Within this reference frame, the individual diagonal components of the mixed electric-magnetic dipole polarizability are separately measurable properties. The theoretical method is applied via a test calculation to the cyclic 1,2-M enantiomer of the dioxin molecule, using a large Gaussian basis set to estimate near Hartree-Fock values within a series of dipole length, velocity, and acceleration representations.