Topological Protection of Optical Skyrmions through Complex Media

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that optical Skyrmions possess inherent topological robustness against complex perturbations, validated through experiments, which supports their potential for reliable high-density optical data applications.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical framework and experimental validation showing the topological robustness of optical Skyrmions under complex perturbations, crucial for optical communication technologies.

Findings

Topological nature of Skyrmions is resilient to boundary-respecting perturbations

Experimental validation of robustness against polarization aberrations

Framework for handling perturbations in Skyrmion fields

Abstract

Optical Skyrmions have many important properties that make them ideal units for high-density data applications, including the ability to carry digital information through a discrete topological number and the independence of spatially varying polarization to other dimensions. More importantly, the topological nature of the optical Skyrmion heuristically suggests a strong degree of robustness to perturbations, which is crucial for reliably carrying information in noisy environments. However, the study of the topological robustness of optical Skyrmions is still in its infancy. Here, we quantify this robustness precisely by proving that the topological nature of the Skyrmion arises from its structure on the boundary and, by duality, is therefore resilient to complex perturbations provided they respect the relevant boundary conditions of the unperturbed Skyrmion. We then present experimental evidence validating this robustness in the context of paraxial Skyrmion beams against different polarization aberrations. Our work provides a framework for handling various perturbations of Skyrmion fields and offers guarantees of robustness in a general sense. This, in turn, has implications for applications of the optical Skyrmion where their topological nature is exploited explicitly, and, in particular, provides an underpinning for the use of Skyrmions in optical communications and photonic computing.