Tunneling and Parity Violation in Trisulfane (HSSSH): An Almost Ideal Molecule for Detecting Parity Violation in Chiral Molecules

Measuring the parity‐violating energy difference ΔpvE between the enantiomers of chiral molecules is a major challenge of current physical‐chemical stereochemistry. An important step towards this goal is to identify suitable molecules for such experiments by means of theory. This step has been made by calculations for the complex dynamics of tunneling and electroweak quantum chemistry of parity violation in the “classic” molecule trisulfane, HSSSH, which satisfies the relevant conditions for experiments almost ideally, as the molecule is comparatively simple and parity violation clearly dominates over tunneling in the ground state. At the same time, the barrier for stereomutation is easily overcome by the S−H infrared chromophore. Molecular parity violation: The experimental detection of parity violation in chiral molecules remains one of the greatest challenges in physical–chemical stereochemistry. Trisulfane (HSSSH)—a “classic” among the simplest chiral molecules—has surprisingly been identified as an almost ideal candidate to study this phenomenon.