Light-sound interconversion in optomechanical Dirac materials

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how optomechanical Dirac physics enables photon-phonon interconversion, with controllable scattering and tunneling properties, potentially useful for future photon-phonon circuitry.

Contribution

It introduces a novel optomechanical system exhibiting Dirac physics, including polaritonic bound states and angle-dependent Klein tunneling, with tunable scattering via Fano resonances.

Findings

Formation of polaritonic quasi-bound states inside the dot

Angle-dependent Klein tunneling of light and sound

Switchable forward scattering via Fano resonance

Abstract

Analyzing the scattering and conversion process between photons and phonons coupled via radiation pressure in a circular quantum dot on a honeycomb array of optomechanical cells, we demonstrate the emergence of optomechanical Dirac physics. Specifically we prove the formation of polaritonic quasi-bound states inside the dot, and angle-dependent Klein tunneling of light and emission of sound, depending on the energy of the incident photon, the photon-phonon interaction strength, and the radius of the dot. We furthermore demonstrate that forward scattering of light or sound can almost switched off by an optically tuned Fano resonance; thereby the system may act as an optomechanical translator in a future photon-phonon based circuitry.