Sum-Frequency Generation from Chiral Media and Interfaces

Abstract

Professor Yuen-Ron Shen, Co-chair Professor Richard J. Saykally, Co-chair Sum frequency generation (SFG), a second-order nonlinear optical process, is electric-dipole forbidden in systems with inversion symmetry. As a result, it has been used to study chiral media and interfaces, systems intrinsically lacking inversion symmetry.This thesis describes recent progresses in the applications of and new insights into SFG from chiral media and interfaces.SFG from solutions of chiral amino acids is investigated, and a theoretical model explaining the origin and the strength of the chiral signal in electronic-resonance SFG spectroscopy is discussed. An interference scheme that allows us to distinguish enantiomers by measuring both the magnitude and the phase of the chiral SFG response is described, as well as a chiral SFG microscope producing chirality-sensitive images with sub-micron 2 resolution. Exploiting atomic and molecular parity nonconservation, the SFG process is also used to solve the Ozma problems.Sum frequency vibrational spectroscopy is used to obtain the adsorption behavior of leucine molecules at air-water interfaces. With poly(tetrafluoroethylene) as a model system, we extend the application of this surface-sensitive vibrational spectroscopy to fluorinecontaining polymers.