Raman optical activity

Raman optical activity (ROA) is a vibrational spectroscopic technique that is reliant on the difference in intensity of Raman scattered right and left circularly polarised light due to molecular chirality. Raman optical activity (ROA) is a vibrational spectroscopic technique that is reliant on the difference in intensity of Raman scattered right and left circularly polarised light due to molecular chirality. The field began with the doctoral work of Laurence D. Barron with Peter Atkins at the University of Oxford and was later further developed by Barron with David Buckingham at the University of Cambridge. More developments, including important contributions to the development of practical Raman optical activity instruments, were made by Werner Hug of the University of Fribourg, and Lutz Hecht with Laurence Barron at the University of Glasgow. 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.