Rotation and electric-field responses and absolute enantioselection in chiral crystals

Abstract

Microscopic origin of chirality and possible electric-field induced rotation and rotation-field induced electric polarization are investigated. By building up a realistic tight-binding model for elemental Te crystal in terms of symmetry-adopted basis, we identify the microscopic origin of the chirality and essential couplings among polar and axial vectors with the same time-reversal properties. Based on this microscopic model, we elucidate quantitatively that the inter-band process, driven by the nearest-neighbor spin-dependent imaginary hopping, is the key factor in the electric-field induced rotation and its inverse response. From the symmetry point of view, these couplings are characteristic common to any chiral material, leading to a possible experimental approach to achieve absolute enantioselection by simultaneously applied electric and rotation fields, or magnetic field and electric current, and so on, as a conjugate field of the chirality.