Ultrafast Chirality for Life and Technology

TRILOGY establishes the interface between the emerging field of Ultrafast Chirality and its Life and Technology applications by using attosecond electronic response to light, the fastest agent in mediating electric signals, highlighted by the 2023 Physics Nobel Prize.Chirality, a dissymmetry between a molecule and its mirror image, is a synonym of life: it enables metabolic reactions and stability of proteins. Abnormal chirality is an indicator for cancer cells, brain or kidney diseases, but its accurate detection requires a combination of high precision and speed, where attosecond response to light gives clear advantage to optical methods. Standard chiro-optical methods are fundamentally limited in accuracy by a ratio of molecular size to the light wavelength. Resolving ultrafast electron dynamics we remove this limitation and break into a new regime with chiral signals outperforming standard methods by severalorders of magnitude. We will take advantage of this paradigm shift in chiral measurements and develop new efficient ultrafast spectroscopies for discriminating medium sized chiral biomolecules and elucidating charge and spin transport in chiral media at the most fundamental level: the level of electrons. We overlap the training and innovation landscapes in a unique way inspired by a common drive to bring cutting-edge scientific developments to applications, enabled by strong involvement of industry. We will (i) integrate our methods with existing analytics for quick market adaptation, working with the market leader for mass spectrometry(ThermoFisher), (ii) further them to unprecedentedly high throughput enabled by laser technology (Amplitude) and state-of-the-art imaging (PIimaging). We will make a difference, motivate and inspire young minds, training a new generation of researchers at the interface of fundamental science, technology and high-tech industry to bring cutting edge research through industrial applications to the benefit of the society.