Lifting the mirror symmetry of metal surfaces: Decoupling the electronic and physical manifestation of surface chirality

Optically active second harmonic generation (OA-SHG) is used to demonstrate that the adsorption of chiral molecules can reversibly and without significant structural rearrangement, measurably lift the mirror symmetry of the surface electronic structure of a metal. It is proposed that the ability of a chiral molecule to place a significant 'chiral perturbation' on the electronic structure of a surface is correlated to its adsorption geometry.