  The development of new methodologies for the selective synthesis of
individual enantiomers is still one of the major challenges in synthetic
chemistry. Many biomolecules, and therefore many pharmaceutical compounds, are
indeed chiral. While the use of chiral reactants or catalysts has led to
significant progress in the field of asymmetric synthesis, a systematic
approach applicable to general reactions has still not been proposed. In this
work, we show that strong coupling to circularly polarized fields represents a
promising alternative for reaching highly selective asymmetric synthesis in a
non-invasive fashion. We demonstrate that the field induces stereoselectivity
in the early stages of the chemical reaction, by selecting an energetically
preferred direction of approach for the reagents.
