Enhanced Chiral Detection via Entropy Analysis on Time-Resolved Chiral Signals

Chiral detection, distinguishing enantiomers of opposite chirality, is among the most important and challenging tasks in natural sciences. Traditional chiroptical detection methods rely on the differential steady-state absorptions and phase shifts of circularly polarized light and thus suffer from the low asymmetry factors in the signals, limiting the detection efficiency. Here, we propose a new way to detect the chirality of enantiomers. It uses entropy related to the dynamics of two enantiomers driven by chiral light to distinguish molecular chirality, instead of the steady-state absorptions and phase shifts of enantiomers. Applying our method in the case using circularly polarized light, we find that the asymmetry factor can be enhanced by several orders of magnitude, which means that the chiral observable can efficiently exhibit molecular chirality. Our proposed method also has universality, which can be applicable to all chiral light cases. Thus, our findings provide a new strategy for the ultrasensitive characterization and quantification of molecular chirality.