Optical polarizer based on the mechanical effect of light.

Based on the recent experimental progress in chip-scale silicon photonics, a nontrivial polarizing effect arising from the mechanical effect of light is present in an optomechanical crystal, which enables a new nanophotonic polarizer with excellent functionality. Unlike previously reported optical polarizers, the polarizer proposed here can be adjusted rapidly by tuning polarization and intensity of the control field and may enable on-chip optical control of polarization management with remarkable applications, due to the improvement of nanofabrication techniques.