Topological structures of energy flow: Poynting vector skyrmions
Abstract
Topological properties of energy flow of light are fundamentally interesting and have rich practical applications in optical manipulations. Here, skyrmion-like structures formed by Poynting vectors are unveiled in the focal region of a pair of counter-propagating cylindrical vector vortex beams in free space. A N\'eel-Bloch-N\'eel skyrmion type transformation of Poynting vectors is observed along the light propagating direction within a volume with subwavelength feature sizes. The corresponding skyrmion type can be determined by the phase singularities of the individual components of the coherently superposed electromagnetic field in the focal region. This work reveals a new family member of optical skyrmions and may introduce novel physical phenomena associated with light scattering and optical force.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2306.05191,
title = {Topological structures of energy flow: Poynting vector skyrmions},
author = {Sicong Wang and Jialin Sun and Zecan Zheng and Zhikai Zhou and Hongkun Cao and Shichao Song and Zi-Lan Deng and Fei Qin and Yaoyu Cao and Xiangping Li},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.05191},
year = {2023}
}