A Chirality-Based Quantum Leap: A Forward-Looking Review

Author(s): Aiello, Clarice D; Abbas, Muneer; Abendroth, John; Banerjee, Amartya S; Beratan, David; Belling, Jason; Berche, Bertrand; Botana, Antia; Caram, Justin R; Celardo, Luca; Cuniberti, Gianaurelio; Dianat, Arezoo; Guo, Yuqi; Gutierrez, Rafael; Herrmann, Carmen; Hihath, Josh; Kale, Suneet; Kurian, Philip; Lai, Ying-Cheng; Medina, Ernesto; Mujica, Vladimiro; Naaman, Ron; Noormandipour, Mohammadreza; Palma, Julio; Paltiel, Yossi; Petuskey, William; Ribeiro-Silva, Joao Carlos; Stemer, Dominik; Valdes-Curiel, Ana; Varela, Solmar; Waldeck, David; Weiss, Paul S; Zacharias, Helmut; Wang, Qing Hua | Abstract: The interest in chiral degrees of freedom occurring in matter and in electromagnetic fields is experiencing a renaissance driven by recent observations of the chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect in chiral molecules and engineered nanomaterials. The CISS effect underpins the fact that charge transport through nanoscopic chiral structures has been conclusively shown to favor a particular electronic spin orientation, resulting in large room-temperature spin polarizations. Observations of the CISS effect suggest unique opportunities for spin control and for the design and fabrication of room-temperature quantum devices from the bottom up, with atomic-scale precision. Any technology that relies on optimal charge transport -- i.e., the entire quantum device industry -- could benefit from chiral quantum properties. These can be theoretically and experimentally investigated from a quantum information perspective, which is presently lacking. There are uncharted implications for the quantum sciences once chiral couplings can be engineered to affect how well quantum information is stored, transduced and manipulated. This forward-looking review article provides a survey of the experimental and theoretical fundamentals of chiral-influenced quantum effects, and presents a vision for their future role in enabling room-temperature quantum technologies.