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Supertoroidal light pulses as electromagnetic skyrmions propagating in free space

Yijie Shen Orcid Logo, Yaonan Hou, Nikitas Papasimakis Orcid Logo, Nikolay I. Zheludev

Nature Communications, Volume: 12, Issue: 1

Swansea University Author: Yaonan Hou

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DOI (Published version): 10.1038/s41467-021-26037-w

Abstract

Topological complex transient electromagnetic fields give access to nontrivial light-matter interactions and provide additional degrees of freedom for information transfer. An important example of such electromagnetic excitations are space-time non-separable single-cycle pulses of toroidal topology,...

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Published in: Nature Communications
ISSN: 2041-1723
Published: Springer Science and Business Media LLC 2021
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URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa65284
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Abstract: Topological complex transient electromagnetic fields give access to nontrivial light-matter interactions and provide additional degrees of freedom for information transfer. An important example of such electromagnetic excitations are space-time non-separable single-cycle pulses of toroidal topology, the exact solutions of Maxwell’s equations described by Hellwarth and Nouchi in 1996 and recently observed experimentally. Here we introduce an extended family of electromagnetic excitation, the supertoroidal electromagnetic pulses, in which the Hellwarth-Nouchi pulse is just the simplest member. The supertoroidal pulses exhibit skyrmionic structure of the electromagnetic fields, multiple singularities in the Poynting vector maps and fractal-like distributions of energy backflow. They are of interest for transient light-matter interactions, ultrafast optics, spectroscopy, and toroidal electrodynamics.
College: Faculty of Science and Engineering
Funders: The authors are grateful to Janne Ruostekoski for discussions and acknowledge the supports of the MOE Singapore (MOE2016-T3-1-006), the UKs Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant EP/M009122/1, Funder Id: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000266), the European Research Council (advanced grant FLEET-786851, Funder Id: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000781), and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under the Nascent Light Matter Interactions program.
Issue: 1

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