# Spontaneous and engineered transformations of topological structures in nonlinear media with gain and loss

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a robust method to control and transform topological structures like vortices in nonlinear media with gain and loss, enabling spontaneous changes and generation of vortices with specific topological charges.

## Contribution

It presents a novel mechanism for externally controlling the evolution and transformation of dissipative topological structures in nonlinear media with gain and loss.

## Key findings

- Controlled topological transformations demonstrated
- Generation of vortices with desired topological charge
- Spontaneous topological changes achieved

## Abstract

In contrast to conservative systems, in nonlinear media with gain and loss the dynamics of localized topological structures can exhibit unique features that can be controlled externally. We propose a robust mechanism to perform topological transformations changing characteristics of dissipative vortices and their complexes in a controllable way. We show that a properly chosen control carries out the evolution of dissipative structures to regime with spontaneous transformation of the topological excitations or drives generation of vortices with control over the topological charge.