A Necessary and Sufficient Condition in the Model of Kondepudi and Nelson for the Breaking of Chiral Symmetry

Abstract

The setting is a system containing achiral reactants which form a chiral compound. In 1983, Kondepudi and Nelson proposed a model for the breaking of chiral symmetry. The present article reduces the conditions for bifurcation to a single condition which is shown to be both necessary and sufficient. A number of other papers on this topic also propose models for the breaking of chiral symmetry. These are shown to be essentially special cases of the model of Kondepudi and Nelson, with the same necessary and sufficient condition. The central question of this line of research is: in a racemic mixture of a chiral compound, could an excess of one enantiomer over the other develop on its own? Our answer is yes, if and only if a certain simple condition is satisfied. This answer should prove useful in further research, both theoretical and experimental, into the origin of life.