Chiral Tetrahedrons as Unitary Quaternions: Molecules and Particles Under the Same Standard?

Abstract

Chiral tetrahedral molecules can be dealt under the standard of quaternionic algebra. Specifically, non-commutativity of quaternions is a feature directly related to the chirality of molecules. It is shown that a quaternionic representation naturally comes out from empirical Fischer projections and the action of the related algebra on the quantum states of molecules is studied. Analogies with fundamental particle physics are discussed.