Topological structures of energy flow: Poynting vector skyrmions

Topological properties of energy flow of light are fundamentally interesting and have rich practical applications in optical manipulations. Here, skyrmion-like structures formed by Poynting vectors are unveiled in the focal region of a pair of counter-propagating cylindrical vector vortex beams in f...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2023-06
Main Authors: Wang, Sicong, Sun, Jialin, Zheng, Zecan, Zhou, Zhikai, Cao, Hongkun, Song, Shichao, Zi-Lan Deng, Qin, Fei, Cao, Yaoyu, Li, Xiangping
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Electromagnetic fields
Electron beams
Energy flow
Hypothetical particles
Particle theory
Singularity (mathematics)
Topology
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Topological properties of energy flow of light are fundamentally interesting and have rich practical applications in optical manipulations. Here, skyrmion-like structures formed by Poynting vectors are unveiled in the focal region of a pair of counter-propagating cylindrical vector vortex beams in free space. A Néel-Bloch-Néel skyrmion type transformation of Poynting vectors is observed along the light propagating direction within a volume with subwavelength feature sizes. The corresponding skyrmion type can be determined by the phase singularities of the individual components of the coherently superposed electromagnetic field in the focal region. This work reveals a new family member of optical skyrmions and may introduce novel physical phenomena associated with light scattering and optical force.
ISSN:2331-8422