Charge and Spin Dynamics and Enantioselectivity in Chiral Molecules

Abstract

Charge and spin dynamics is addressed in chiral molecules immediately after the instantaneous coupling to an external metallic reservoir. It is shown how a spin-polarization is induced in the chiral structure as a response to the charge dynamics. The dynamics indicate that chiral induced spin selectivity is an excited states phenomenon which, in the transient regime partly can be captured using a simplistic single particle description, however, in the stationary limit definitively shows that electron correlations, e.g., electron-vibration interactions, crucially contribute to sustain an intrinsic spin anisotropy that can lead to a non-vanishing spin selectivity. The dynamics, moreover, provide insight to enantiomer separation, due to different acquired spin-polarizations.