Electromagnetic chirality and its applications

Abstract

Chirality is a geometric notion which refers to the handedness of an object. A chiral object is, by definition, a body that cannot be brought into congruence with its mirror image by translation and rotation. In other words, such a body lacks bilateral symmetry, and cannot be superposed on its mirror image. An object of this sort has the property of handedness and is said to be either right-handed or left-handed. An object that is not chiral is achiral. Some chiral objects occur in two versions relatedto each other as a chiral object and its mirror image. Objects so related are said to be enanriomorphs of each other. If a chiral object is found to be lefthanded, its enantiomorph is right-handed, and vice versa. Two examples of chiral objects, the Mbbius strip and the irregular tetrahedron, and their enantiomorphs are shown in Fig. 1. Note that these objects and their mirror images are incongruent