Periodic skyrmionic textures via conformal cartographic projections

Abstract

We find periodic skyrmionic textures via conformal cartographic projections that map either an entire spherical parameter space or a hemisphere onto every regular polygon that provides regular tessellations of the plane. These textures minimize the energy inherent to the mapping and preserve the sign of the Skyrme density throughout the entire space. We show that 2D spinor fields (e.g., 2D polarization) that present periodic textures preserving the sign of the Skyrme density, unavoidably exhibit zeros. We implement these textures in the polarization state of a laser beam.