Optomechanical circulator with a polaritonic microcavity

Abstract

We study theoretically optomechanical interactions in a semiconductor microcavity with embedded quantum well under the optical pumping by a Bessel beam, carrying a non-zero orbital momentum. Due to the transfer of orbital momentum from light to phonons, the microcavity can act as an acoustic circulator: it rotates the propagation direction of the incident phonon by a certain angle clockwise or anticlockwise. Due to the optomechanical heating and cooling effects, the circulator can also function as an acoustic laser emitting sound with nonzero angular momentum. Our calculations demonstrate the potential of semiconductor microcavities for compact integrable optomechanical devices.