Scalar optical hopfions

Wan, Chenhao; Shen, Yijie; Chong, Andy; Zhan, Qiwen

doi:10.1186/s43593-022-00030-2

Cited by 43 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…28 In photonics, only fundamental-order hopfions with a unit Hopf index have been reported. 44 Spatial knot configurations of isophase in structured light fields have also been studied, [45][46][47] but they do not fulfill the 3D Hopf map. The generation and properties of higher-order photonic hopfions and their topological spin texture tuning have yet to be explored.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Topological transformation and free-space transport of photonic hopfions

Shen

et al. 2023

Adv. Photon.

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Structured light fields embody strong spatial variations of polarization, phase, and amplitude. Understanding, characterization, and exploitation of such fields can be achieved through their topological properties. Three-dimensional (3D) topological solitons, such as hopfions, are 3D localized continuous field configurations with nontrivial particle-like structures that exhibit a host of important topologically protected properties. Here, we propose and demonstrate photonic counterparts of hopfions with exact characteristics of Hopf fibration, Hopf index, and Hopf mapping from real-space vector beams to homotopic hyperspheres representing polarization states. We experimentally generate photonic hopfions with on-demand high-order Hopf indices and independently controlled topological textures, including Néel-, Bloch-, and antiskyrmionic types. We also demonstrate a robust free-space transport of photonic hopfions, thus showing the potential of hopfions for developing optical topological informatics and communications.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Topological transformation and free-space transport of photonic hopfions

Shen

et al. 2023

Adv. Photon.

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“…Recently, there was a great rise of interest in spatiotemporal vortex pulses (STVPs), which are generalizations of usual 'spatial' vortex states to the space-time domain and the OAM tilted with respect to the propagation direction [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]. This conforms with the rapidly growing field of space-time structured waves allowing manipulation in both spatial and temporal degrees of freedom [41,42].In the simplest case, STVPs are flying doughnut-shaped pulses with the vortex line and OAM orthogonal to their propagation direction.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observation of acoustic spatiotemporal vortices

Zhang

Sun

Huang

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Vortices in fluids and gases have piqued the interest of human for centuries. Development of classical-wave physics and quantum mechanics highlighted wave vortices characterized by phase singularities and topological charges. In particular, vortex beams have found numerous applications in modern optics and other areas. Recently, optical spatiotemporal vortex states exhibiting the phase singularity both in space and time have been reported. Here, we report the first generation of acoustic spatiotemporal vortex pulses. We utilize an acoustic meta-grating with mirror-symmetry breaking as the spatiotemporal vortex generator. In the momentum−frequency domain, we unravel that the transmission spectrum functions exhibit a topological phase transition where the vortices with opposite topological charges are created or annihilated in pairs. Furthermore, with the topological textures of the nodal lines, these vortices are robust and exploited to generate spatiotemporal vortex pulse against structural perturbations and disorder. Our work paves the way for studies and applications of spatiotemporal structured waves in acoustics and other wave systems.

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“…Recently, photonic counterparts of topological solitons have aroused intense interest of researchers. Optical skyrmions and optical hopfions have been experimentally demonstrated and considered to have potential applications in metrology, information encoding, and optical communication 4 , 5 . However, all the current researches on photonic topological solitons are restricted to spatial dimensions and lose sight of temporal or dynamic information of such structures, and hence manipulating corresponding light-matter interactions spatiotemporally remains challenging.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…In the article in eLight 5 , the research group led by Prof. Qiwen Zhan from University of Shanghai for Science and Technology theoretically designed and experimentally demonstrated dynamic scalar optical hopfions weaved by nested equiphase lines in the shape of a toroidal vortex. This spatiotemporally varied optical hopfion is proposed through an analytical expression as an approximate solution to Maxwell’s equations.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%