High capacity topological coding based on nested vortex knots and links

TL;DR

This paper introduces nested vortex knots for optical information encoding, achieving high capacity and robustness by leveraging numerous topological invariants, demonstrated through experimental metasurface hologram fabrication.

Contribution

It presents a novel nested vortex knot structure enabling high-capacity, robust optical coding using multiple topological invariants, advancing topological optical information encoding.

Findings

Successfully fabricated metasurface holograms generating nested vortex links.

Demonstrated high-capacity, robust optical coding scheme.

Verified feasibility of topological knot-based information transfer.

Abstract

Optical knots and links have attracted great attention because of their exotic topological characteristics. Recent investigations have shown that the information encoding based on optical knots could possess robust features against external perturbations. However, as a superior coding scheme, it is also necessary to achieve a high capacity, which is hard to be fulfilled by existing knot-carriers owing to the limit number of associated topological invariants. Thus, how to realize the knot-based information coding with a high capacity is a key problem to be solved. Here, we create a type of nested vortex knot, and show that it can be used to fulfill the robust information coding with a high capacity assisted by a large number of intrinsic topological invariants. In experiments, we design and fabricate metasurface holograms to generate light fields sustaining different kinds of nested vortex links. Furthermore, we verify the feasibility of the high-capacity coding scheme based on those topological optical knots. Our work opens another way to realize the robust and high capacity optical coding, which may have useful impacts on the field of information transfer and storage.