Incoherent light delivers skyrmionic topological resilience and transitions

TL;DR

This paper extends optical skyrmions to partially coherent light sources, revealing how coherence influences topological stability and enabling controlled topological phase transitions in turbulent environments.

Contribution

It introduces stochastic optical skyrmions and demonstrates how partial coherence can preserve and manipulate topological states under environmental randomness.

Findings

Engineered partial coherence provides a self-healing mechanism for skyrmions.

Coherence structure can be tailored to induce topological phase transitions.

Partially coherent light maintains skyrmionic textures in turbulence.

Abstract

Optical skyrmions has recently unlocked topological quasiparticle textures of light, rising in prominence for next-generation ultra-robust information processing. However, to date, their study hasbeen mainly confined to coherent laser fields. Here we extend skyrmions to much general light sources of partially coherent, stochastic optical fields. We define stochastic optical skyrmions and uncover a hidden regime where spatial coherence acts as a primary determinant of topological stability. While environmental randomness typically degrades fully coherent states, we demonstrate that engineered partial coherence provides a self-healing mechanism that preserves topology under extreme turbulence. Moreover, we show that the coherence structure can be actively tailored to trigger on-demand topological phase transitions, such as skyrmion-to-skyrmionium conversion and skyrmion lattice splitting. These findings redefine the boundaries of topological photonics, paving the way for resilient and high-fidelity information platforms that remain operational in general, non-ideal, real-world environments.