Engineering of Tunable Topological Texture Transformation in Optical Skyrmions and Bimerons using Enantiomeric Excess

Abstract

Optical skyrmions, which are the topologically protected quasiparticles and characterized by the nontrivial polarization textures, have emerged as a promising candidate due to their potential applications in optical communication, data storage, and particle manipulation. In this article, we propose and experimentally demonstrate an efficient and tunable approach for the dynamic transformation of generalized optical skyrmionic textures through the interaction of structured vector vortex beams with chiral media. By controlling the enantiomeric excess of an optically active material, we achieve on-demand conversion among Bloch, Neel or any intermediate skyrmionic states, extending also to optical bimerons. The topological conservation of the skyrmion number proves its robustness towards even higher-order textures. While maintaining a common path and stable setup, the proposed methodology provides an efficient and cost-effective approach towards the flexible manipulation of the topological textures, paving the way towards the understanding of topological transformation and engineering optical skyrmions for information processing or particle manipulation.