Raman optical activity

The basic principle of Raman optical activity is that there is interference between light waves scattered by the polarizability and optical activity tensors of a chiral molecule, which leads to a difference between the intensities of the right- and left-handed circularly polarised scattered beams.

The spectrum of intensity differences recorded over a range of wavenumbers reveals information about chiral centres in the sample molecule.

Raman optical activity can be observed in a number of forms, depending on the polarization of the incident and the scattered light.

Due to its sensitivity to chirality, Raman optical activity is a useful probe of biomolecular structure and behaviour in aqueous solution.

In particular, if each methyl group has a different number of substituted atoms (0, 1, 2, and 3), one obtains a chiral molecule.