The Emergence and Exploration of Vibrational Optical Activity

Vibrational optical activity is a new field of molecular spectroscopy which combines the methods of circular differential polarization measurement with the infrared and Raman forms of vibrational spectroscopy. These new spectroscopies, known as infrared vibrational circular dichroism and Raman optical activity, have evolved over the past decade and are presently beginning to make meaningful contributions to the understanding of vibrational force fields and the redistribution of electronic charge in vibrating chiral molecules. In this article some of the early events which led to the author to pursue the development of vibrational optical activity will be described followed by a sampling of recent results of the measurement and calculation of vibrational circular dichroism intensities.