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Nonreciprocal vortex isolator by stimulated Brillouin scattering in chiral photonic crystal fibre

Optical non-reciprocity, which breaks the symmetry between forward and backward propagating optical waves, has become vital in photonic systems and enables many key devices, such as optical isolators, circulators and optical routers. Most conventional optical isolators involve magneto-optic materials, but devices based on optical nonlinearities, optomechanically induced transparency and stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) have also been demonstrated. So far, however, they have only been implemented for linearly or randomly polarized LP01-like fundamental modes. Here we report a light-driven nonreciprocal isolator for optical vortex modes, based on topology-selective SBS in chiral photonic crystal fibre. The device can be reconfigured as an amplifier or an isolator by adjusting the frequency of the control signal. The experimental results show vortex isolation of 22 dB, which is at the state-of-the-art in fundamental mode isolators using SBS. This unique device may find applications in optical communications, fibre lasers, quantum information processing and optical tweezers.