Phys.org July 27, 2018
An international team of researchers (Israel, Albania) generated skyrmions using the electrical field of electromagnetic waves. They demonstrated that in contrast to “regular” light waves, whose electrical fields usually point along a specific direction an electric field can take on a “skyrmion” shape and simultaneously face in all directions and they are robust against various defects in the material hosting the electromagnetic waves. The discovery could enable future replication of this effect in a wide range of systems and materials, including liquids, nanoparticle systems and even cold atomic gasses. It might also lay the ground for new skyrmion applications in optical information processing, transfer and storage… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
Credit: Petr Kratochvil/public domain