High-resolution FTIR spectroscopy of trisulfane HSSSH: a candidate for detecting parity violation in chiral molecules

Abstract

We report the first successful high-resolution analyses of the Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrum of trisulfane. A band centered at 861.0292 cm^-1 can be assigned unambiguously to the chiral trans conformer by means of ground state combination differences in comparison with known rotational spectra. A second band near 864.698 cm^-1 is tentatively assigned to the cis conformer by comparison with theory. The results are discussed in relation to their importance for experimental attempts to measure the parity violating energy difference Δ_pvE between the ground states of enantiomers of chiral molecules.