The optical generation and continuous transformation of plasmonic skyrmions

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the optical creation and transformation of plasmonic skyrmions and merons on a silver film, revealing mechanisms and enabling potential applications in optical data storage.

Contribution

It introduces a method to generate and continuously transform plasmonic skyrmions and merons using structured light and symmetry constraints.

Findings

Generated isolated Ne9el-type skyrmions with surface plasmon polaritons.

Created skyrmion and meron lattices using aperture symmetry.

Demonstrated continuous transformation among different topological textures.

Abstract

Topological quasiparticles, including skyrmions and merons, are topological textures with sophisticated vectorial structures that can be used for high-density information storage, precision metrology, position sensing, etc. Here, we realized the optical generation and continuous transformation of plasmonic field skyrmions. We generated the isolated N\'eel-type skyrmion using surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) excited by a focused structured light on a silver film. We used a square and a hexagonal aperture for symmetry constraints and successfully generated the meron lattice and the skyrmion lattice. We unveiled the mechanism of topological texture generation and transformation and optimized the distribution of skyrmion and meron topologies. We further demonstrated the continuous transformation among the isolated skyrmion, the meron lattice, and the skyrmion lattice using well-designed circular-fourfold, circular-sixfold, and fourfold-sixfold symmetry apertures, respectively. This work can open up a pathway for the generation and transformation of skyrmion and meron topologies, which is expected to facilitate new applications in optical information storage and encoding.