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10 January 2023 Topological transformation and free-space transport of photonic hopfions
Yijie Shen, Bingshi Yu, Haijun Wu, Chunyu Li, Zhihan Zhu, Anatoly V. Zayats
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Abstract

Structured light fields embody strong spatial variations of polarization, phase, and amplitude. Understanding, characterization, and exploitation of such fields can be achieved through their topological properties. Three-dimensional (3D) topological solitons, such as hopfions, are 3D localized continuous field configurations with nontrivial particle-like structures that exhibit a host of important topologically protected properties. Here, we propose and demonstrate photonic counterparts of hopfions with exact characteristics of Hopf fibration, Hopf index, and Hopf mapping from real-space vector beams to homotopic hyperspheres representing polarization states. We experimentally generate photonic hopfions with on-demand high-order Hopf indices and independently controlled topological textures, including Néel-, Bloch-, and antiskyrmionic types. We also demonstrate a robust free-space transport of photonic hopfions, thus showing the potential of hopfions for developing optical topological informatics and communications.

CC BY: © The Authors. Published by SPIE and CLP under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.
Yijie Shen, Bingshi Yu, Haijun Wu, Chunyu Li, Zhihan Zhu, and Anatoly V. Zayats "Topological transformation and free-space transport of photonic hopfions," Advanced Photonics 5(1), 015001 (10 January 2023). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.AP.5.1.015001
Received: 18 November 2022; Accepted: 7 December 2022; Published: 10 January 2023
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CITATIONS
Cited by 29 scholarly publications.
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KEYWORDS
Polarization

Photon transport

Color

Photon polarization

Structured light

Quantum optics experiments

Magnetism

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