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Chirality in Nature

Chirality in Nature

Chirality is the most intriguing yet essential facet of nature, governing life’s biochemical processes and precision. It can be observed from a snail shell pattern in a macroscopic world to an amino acid, the minutest building block of life. Most of the snails around the world have right-coiled shells because of the intrinsic chirality in their genes. All the amino acids present in the human body exist in an enantiomerically pure state, except for glycine - the sole achiral amino acid.

Chirality

Chirality

Chirality is a term that describes the lack of mirror symmetry in an object. In other words, chiral objects cannot be superposed on their mirror images. For example, our feet are chiral, as the mirror image of the left foot, the right foot, cannot be superposed on the left foot.
Chiral objects exhibit a sense of handedness when they interact with another chiral object. For example, our left foot can only fit in the left shoe and not in the right shoe. Achiral objects — objects that have...

Potential Due to a Polarized Object

Potential Due to a Polarized Object

A neutral atom consists of a positively charged nucleus surrounded by a negatively charged electron cloud. When placed in an external electric field, the external electric force pulls the electrons and nucleus apart, opposite to the intrinsic attraction between the nucleus and the electrons. The opposing forces balance each other with a slight shift between the center of masses of the nucleus and the electron cloud, resulting in a polarized atom. On the other hand, a few molecules, like water,...

Induced Electric Dipoles

Induced Electric Dipoles

A permanent electric dipole orients itself along an external electric field. This rotation can be quantified by defining the potential energy because the external torque does work in rotating it. Then, the potential energy is minimum at the parallel configuration and maximum at the antiparallel configuration. While the former is a stable equilibrium, the latter is an unstable equilibrium.
Since the absolute value of potential energy holds no physical meaning, its zero value can be chosen as per...

Potential Due to a Magnetized Object

Potential Due to a Magnetized Object

Magnetic dipoles in magnetic materials are aligned when placed under an external magnetic field. For paramagnets and ferromagnets, dipole alignment occurs in the direction of the magnetic field. However, the dipoles align opposite to the field in the case of diamagnets. This state of magnetic polarization due to the external field is called magnetization. Magnetization is defined as the dipole moment per unit volume. It plays a similar role to polarization in electrostatics.
The vector...

Prochirality

Prochirality

The concept of prochirality leads to the nomenclature of the individual faces of a molecule and plays a crucial role in the enantioselective reaction. It is a concept where two or more achiral molecules react to produce chiral products. A typical process is the reaction of an achiral ketone to generate a chiral alcohol. Here, the achiral reactant reacts with an achiral reducing agent, sodium borohydride, to generate an equimolar mixture of the chiral enantiomers of the product. For example, an...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 19, 2025

Measuring Magnetically-Tuned Ferroelectric Polarization in Liquid Crystals

Measuring Magnetically-Tuned Ferroelectric Polarization in Liquid Crystals

Published on: August 15, 2018

Chiral active matter in external potentials.

Lorenzo Caprini¹, Hartmut Löwen¹, Umberto Marini Bettolo Marconi^2,3

¹Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Institut für Theoretische Physik II - Weiche Materie, D-40225 Düsseldorf, Germany. lorenzo.caprini@gssi.it.

|August 9, 2023

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Chirality in active matter, like chiral Active Brownian particles, influences particle confinement and symmetry breaking under external potentials. This study reveals how chirality affects spatial fluctuations and probability distributions.

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Area of Science:

Physics
Soft Matter Physics
Statistical Mechanics

Background:

Active matter systems exhibit complex behaviors influenced by self-propulsion and interactions.
Chirality introduces rotational motion, leading to unique dynamic properties.
External potentials shape particle behavior, but their interplay with chirality is not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the combined effects of chirality and external potentials on particle dynamics.
To analyze how radial and non-radial potentials modify chiral particle behavior.
To explore symmetry breaking and non-equilibrium statistical properties induced by chirality.

Main Methods:

Theoretical analysis of chiral Active Brownian particles (ABPs) and chiral active Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (aOU) particles.
Modeling particle dynamics under radially symmetric and non-radial (elliptic) potentials.
Calculating spatial fluctuations, probability distributions, and cross-correlations.

Main Results:

Radially symmetric potentials enhance confinement due to chiral motion, effectively lowering temperature.
Non-radial potentials break parity symmetry, a feature absent in non-chiral systems.
Chirality induces non-Maxwell-Boltzmann probability distributions and unique cross-correlations.

Conclusions:

Chirality significantly alters particle confinement and statistical properties in active matter.
The interplay between chirality and potential symmetry dictates emergent behaviors.
This work provides insights into non-equilibrium statistical mechanics of chiral active systems.