Relationship between photochemical mechanisms and chiral molecules

ChiralWaltz

I'm way outside my realm of knowledge here so perhaps I need some help polishing my question or the concepts behind it. Thank you for your patience.

Does the orientation of circularly polarized light (CPL) as a reaction mechanism influence the chirality of the molecule in a general manner, such as left handed circularly polarized light creates levorotatory molecules? More importantly, does CPL influence the optical activity in a similarly consistent manner?

L/D chiral conventions are based on nomenclature rules and therefore I suspect any influence would be coincidental. How would I Google or go about collecting data for my question?

epenguin

I do know that starting in the 1970s if not earlier many observations have been made of chirally asymetric photochemical reactions promoted by circularly polarised light, though as far as I know the effects have always been quite small.

More often than not the work is done with origin of life very much in mind.

ChiralWaltz

Thanks for the response. The relationship light has with life has been on my mind recently.