“…Optics of liquid crystals (LCs) is well known for fruitfulness in applications and a remarkable variety of connections between observable physical phenomena [1]. A fascinating connection can be traced between the concept of geometric phase (GP) [2], also known as a topological phase, and a number of phenomena in quantum, relativistic, classical physics [3], and, in particular, in polarization optics [4][5][6]. Today photonics is at the apogee of topological ideas [7,8].…”