Quantum limits to chiroptical molecular discrimination

Abstract:Discriminating enantiomer pairs is of central importance in the molecular sciences. The preferential interaction between chiral light and matter is commonly employed in this discrimination, despite fundamental challenges. Here we present quantitative error bounds for classifying the handedness of a chiral, randomly oriented, quantum optical emitter from the perspective of classical and quantum hypothesis testing. Most interestingly, we find that a collective measurement on $N$ photons can provide an orders-of-magnitude improvement in error rate relative to a corresponding separable measurement.

Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph); Optics (physics.optics)

arXiv:2607.19136 [quant-ph]

(or arXiv:2607.19136v1 [quant-ph] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.19136 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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