Optomechanical Metamaterials: Dirac polaritons, Gauge fields, and Instabilities

Freestanding photonic crystals can be used to trap both light and mechanical vibrations. These ``optomechanical crystal'' structures have already been experimentally demonstrated to yield strong coupling between a photon mode and a phonon mode, co-localized at a single defect site. Future devices may feature a regular superlattice of such defects, turning them into ``optomechanical arrays.'' We predict that tailoring the optomechanical band structure of such arrays can be used to implement Dirac physics of photons and phonons, to create a photonic gauge field via mechanical vibrations, and to observe a novel optomechanical instability.