Second Order Optical Merons, or Light Pretending to Be a Ferromagnet – SciTechDaily

Spin texture of a second-order half-skyrmion (meron) on the surface of a birefringent cavity. Credit: Physics UW, M. Krol
Scientists have demonstrated how to structure light such that its polarization behaves like a collective of spins in a ferromagnet forming half-skyrmions (also known as merons). To achieve this, the light was trapped in a thin liquid crystal layer between two nearly perfect mirrors. Skyrmions, in general, are found, e.g., as elementary excitations of magnetization in a two-dimensional…

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