Chiral effects in spin-dependent elastic electron scattering from molecules

A general theory of elastic spin-dependent collisions between electrons and spinless molecules is developed. The main emphasis is on scattering from oriented, chiral and achiral molecules, although results for isotropic target systems are also derived. Spin-dependent phenomena are predicted and illustrated with several examples. In particular, chiral effects are discussed in detail and classified according to their behaviour under spatial inversion and time reversal. The authors identify two types of chiral phenomena associated with systems exhibiting 'time-even' and 'time-odd' chirality. The corresponding observables are calculated for a chiral model molecule. It is concluded from the numerical results that the predicted new spin-dependent effects could be measured experimentally.