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Abstract

We give an overview of linear and nonlinear optical processes that can be specific to chiral molecules in isotropic media. Specifically, we discuss the pseudoscalars that underlie nonlinear optical activity and chiral frequency conversion processes in fluids. We show that nonlinear optical techniques open entirely new ways of exploring chirality: Sum-frequency-generation (SFG) at second-order and BioCARS at fourth-order arise in the electric-dipole approximation and do not require circularly polarized light to detect chiral molecules in solution. Here the frequency conversion in itself is a measure of chirality. This is in contrast to natural optical activity phenomena which are based on the interference of radiation from induced oscillating electric and magnetic dipoles, and which are observed as a differential response to right and left circularly polarized light. We give examples from our SFG experiments in optically active solutions and show how the application of an additional static electric field to sum-frequency generation allows the absolute configuration of the chiral solute to be determined via an electric-dipolar process. Results from ab initio calculations of the SFG pseudoscalar are presented for a number of chiral molecules