Realization of Non-diffracting and Self-healing Optical Skyrmions

TL;DR

This paper theoretically demonstrates non-diffracting, self-healing optical skyrmions formed by superposing orthogonal Bessel modes, highlighting their topological protection and potential for novel polarization textures.

Contribution

It introduces a new method to generate optical skyrmions using Bessel modes, expanding the types of skyrmions beyond Laguerre-Gaussian modes.

Findings

Optical skyrmions are topologically protected and stable during propagation.

Superposition of Bessel modes enables non-diffracting, self-healing skyrmions.

Experimental configuration for variable order skyrmions is proposed.

Abstract

Optical skyrmions formed in terms of polarization are topological quasi-particles and have garnered much interest in the optical community owing to their unique inhomogeneous polarization structure and simplicity in their experimental realization. These structures belong to the Poincar\'e beams satisfying the stable topology. We theoretically investigated the non-diffracting and self-healing Poincar\'e beams based on the superposition of two orthogonal Bessel modes by mode matching technique. These Poincar\'e beams are topologically protected, and we suggest them as optical skyrmions. These optical skyrmions are quasi-skyrmions and their range of propagation depends on the range of superposed Bessel modes. The polarization structure of these optical skyrmions has no change upon the propagation. A necessary experimental configuration is suggested to realize variable order skyrmions in Bessel modes experimentally. This work can provide a new direction for the generation of skyrmions with completely new textures and features with respect to existing skyrmions originating from Laguerre-Gaussian modes.