Description of Research
A general theory of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in chemical systems has been formulated. The fundamental equations of this theory depend only on the two-fold mirror-image symmetry and not on the details of the chemical kinetics. Close to equilibrium, the system will be in a symmetric state in which the amounts of the two enantiomers of all chiral molecules are equal. When the system is driven away from equilibrium by a flow of chemicals, a point is reached at which the system becomes unstable to small fluctuation in the difference in the amount of the two enantiomers. As a consequence, a small random fluctuation in the difference in the amount of the two enantiomers spontaneously grows and the system makes a transition to an asymmetric state. The general theory describes this phenomenon in the vicinity of the transition point. --READ MORE--