Raman incident circular polarization

The two most important experimental setups for the measurement of ROA are backscat-tering (180°) incident circular polarization (ICP) ROA and backscattering in-phase dual circular polarization (DCPi) ROA. The ROA and parent Raman intensities written in terms of ROA and Raman invariants in the FFR limit are given by... 

Che D, Hecht L, Nafie LA. Dual and incident circular polarization Raman optical activity backscattering of (—)-trans-pinane. Chem. Phys. Lett. 1991 180(3) 182-190. 

For a circularly polarized light experiment, one can measure the cross sections for either right (r) or left (1) polarized scattered light. Suppose that right polarized light is made incident on a Raman active sample. The general expressions for the Raman cross sections are [176]... 

Fig. 1. The basic ROA experiment measures a small difference in the intensity of Raman scattering from chiral molecules in right- and left-circularly polarized incident light. Reprinted from Barron et al., 2000, Prog. Biophys. Mol. Biol. 73,1-49, with permission from Elsevier Science.

The other form of optical activity in vibrational transitions is known as Raman optical activity (ROA). Here, also, one measures an intensity difference for left compared to right circularly polarized incident radiation however, optical activity in light scattering has no direct analog in electronic spectroscopy. ROA was first measured by Laurence Barron, A. D. Buckingham, and M. P. Bogaard in 1973 (9) and several reviews of the subject have since appeared (10-14). 

Fig. 7.1. Two equivalent ROA experiments involving Stokes vibrational Raman scattering at angular frequency oj — ojv in incident light of angular frequency oj far from resonance, a The ICP ROA experiment measures JR - JL, where JR and JL are the scattered intensities (shown here as unpolarized) in right- and left-circularly polarized incident light, respectively, b The SCP ROA experiment measures hi-h., where Jr and JL are the intensities of the right- and left-circularly polarized components, respectively, of the scattered light using incident light of fixed polarization (shown here as unpolarized)...

Nafie (1992) has given a review about the latest VOA instrumentation. Until 1988, the only measured form of ROA was incident circular polarisation (ICP) ROA, but as the process observed in Raman spectroscopy is a two-photon process, there are four possibilities for measuring Raman optical activity. ICP ROA is the unpolarized measurement of the Raman radiation emitted upon excitation with alternating right and left circularly polarized light. It is shown in Fig. 6.3-12, following the sketches of Nafie. As the first of the other possibilities scattered circular polarisation (SCP) ROA was measured. This... 

This article reviews all the published work concerned with the study of vibrational optical activity in chiral molecules from measurements of a small difference in the intensity of Raman scattering in right and left circularly polarized incident light. The history and basic theory are described briefly, followed by an account of the instrumentation and the precautions that must be observed in order to suppress spurious signals. The various theories that have been proposed in order to relate stereochemical features to the observations are then outlined, this being followed by a survey of all reported Raman optical activity spectra. 

The Raman approach to vibrational optical activity is based on measurement of a small difference in the intensity of Raman-scattered light from chiral molecules in right and left circularly polarized incident light, and several reviews have appeared previously1 -S). However, another review is now timely because important experimental and theoretical developments have since brought Raman optical activity (ROA) to a new level of maturity. 

Hug and Surbeck 35) have proposed the use of Ada. = daL — daR, the difference of the Raman differential scattering cross sections in left and right circularly polarized incident light. This is the Raman equivalent of the circular dichroism Ae = el — eR, where s is the decadic molar extinction coefficient and, unlike the measured (but not the theoretical) IR — IL which depends on both sample and instrumental factors, is solely a molecular parameter. They introduced a chirality number q defined by... 

In the past 25 years, a new area of Raman spectroscopy has evolved that is also a new form of molecular optical activity [9,11-13]. Called Raman optical activity (ROA), this form of Raman scattering applies only to chiral molecules, molecules whose mirror-image pairs are nonsuperposable. ROA is broadly defined as the difference in Raman scattering for right versus left circularly polarized (CP) radiation, where the change in the CP state of the light is effected for either the incident radiation, the scattered radiation, or both, either in phase or out of phase. The theory of ROA is more complex than the theory... 

Within the harmonic approximation, the Raman, ROA [for a naturally polarized incident light (n) in the scattered circularly polarized (SCP) scheme] [26-28], IR, and VCD [29-32] intensities associated with the pth vibrational normal mode respectively read ... 

The measurement of vibrational optical activity requires the optimization of signal quality, since the experimental intensities are between three and six orders of magnitude smaller than the parent IR absorption or Raman scattering intensities. To date all successful measurements have employed the principles of modulation spectroscopy so as to overcome short-term instabilities and noise and thereby to measure VOA intensities accurately. In this approach, the polarization of the incident radiation is modulated between left and tight circular states and the difference intensity, averaged over many modulation cycles, is retained. In spite of this common basis, there are major differences in measurement technique and instrumentation between VCD and ROA consequently, the basic experimental methodology of these two techniques will be described separately. 

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