Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A chiral phenomenon is one that is not identical to its mirror image (see the article on mathematical chirality). The spin of a particle may be used to define a handedness, or helicity, for that particle, which, in the case of a massless particle, is the same as chirality. A symmetry transformation between the two is called parity transformation.
A phonon is a collective excitation in a periodic, elastic arrangement of atoms or molecules in condensed matter, specifically in solids and some liquids.A type of quasiparticle in physics, [1] a phonon is an excited state in the quantum mechanical quantization of the modes of vibrations for elastic structures of interacting particles.
Homochirality is a uniformity of chirality, or handedness.Objects are chiral when they cannot be superposed on their mirror images. For example, the left and right hands of a human are approximately mirror images of each other but are not their own mirror images, so they are chiral.
The term "chiral" in general is used to describe the object that is non-superposable on its mirror image. [18] In chemistry, chirality usually refers to molecules. Two mirror images of a chiral molecule are called enantiomers or optical isomers. Pairs of enantiomers are often designated as "right-", "left-handed" or, if they have no bias ...
Chirality with hands and two enantiomers of a generic amino acid The direction of current flow and induced magnetic flux follow a "handness" relationship. The term chiral / ˈ k aɪ r əl / describes an object, especially a molecule, which has or produces a non-superposable mirror image of itself.
Solids with more than one atom in the smallest unit cell representing the lattice have two types of phonons, i.e., acoustic and optical. (Acoustic phonons are in-phase movements of atoms about their equilibrium positions, while optical phonons are out-of-phase movement of adjacent atoms in the lattice.)
Phonons take on both labels such that transverse acoustic and optical phonons are denoted TA and TO, respectively; likewise, longitudinal acoustic and optical phonons are denoted LA and LO. The type of surface phonon can be characterized by its dispersion in relation to the bulk phonon modes of the crystal.
Optical phonons, by contrast, have a non-zero angular frequency at = and have a negative slope, which is also much smaller in magnitude to that of photons. This will result in the crossing of the optical phonon branch and the photon dispersion, leading to their coupling and the forming of a phonon polariton.