Coherence toroidal vortices and statistic-veiled correlation topologies

TL;DR

This paper reports the experimental discovery of coherence toroidal vortices in stochastic optical fields, revealing hidden topological correlation structures that are robust under environmental disturbances.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of coherence toroidal vortices in partially coherent light, unveiling statistically hidden topologies accessible through second-order correlations.

Findings

Observation of toroidal vortices in stochastic optical wavefields.

Identification of topological invariants in second-order correlations.

Robustness of correlation topologies under environmental perturbations.

Abstract

Toroidal vortices in fluid and gas dynamics underpin a broad spectrum of scientific and technological fields, from elementary particle physics to condensed matter systems, and have recently garnered significant attention in optics because of their inherent topological stability. Here we report the experimental observation of toroidal vortices in stochastic optical wavefields with partial coherence, termed coherence toroidal vortices, which eliminates deterministic topological signatures in conventional optical degrees of freedom while unveiling statistically hidden correlation topologies. These underlying topologies-including both fundamental and higher-order hopfionic textures-emerge exclusively in second-order field correlations and are accessible only through statistical measurements. We further examine the impact of chaotic channels on the stability of these statistically veiled correlation topologies, demonstrating that their topological invariants remain robust under realistic environmental perturbations. These findings are experimentally validated and offer novel insights into the potential of toroidal light vortices serving as controllable channels for directional energy and information transfer within complex media.