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Updated: Jun 17, 2026

Differential Imaging of Biological Structures with Doubly-resonant Coherent Anti-stokes Raman Scattering (CARS)
Published on: October 17, 2010
Transfer and Amplification of Chirality Within the "Ring of Fire" Observed in Resonance Raman Optical Activity
Guojie Li1, Jiří Kessler2, Joseph Cheramy1
1Department of Chemistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2G2, Canada.
Abstract:
We report extremely strong chirality transfer from a chiral nickel complex to solvent molecules detected as Raman optical activity (ROA). Electronic energies of the complex were in resonance with the excitation-laser light. The phenomenon was observed for a wide range of achiral and chiral solvents. For chiral 2-butanol, the induced ROA was even stronger than the natural one. The observations were related to so-called quantum (molecular) plasmons that enable a strong chiral Rayleigh scattering of the resonating complex. According to a model presented here, the maximal induced ROA intensity occurs at a certain distance from the solute, in a three-dimensional "ring of fire", even after rotational averaging. Most experimental ROA signs and relative intensities could be reproduced. The effect might significantly increase the potential of ROA spectroscopy in bioimaging and sensitive detection of chiral molecules.
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