Phys.org  January 19, 2023 Achieving hopfions with light waves is very elusive. An international team of researchers (UK, China) proposed and demonstrated photonic counterparts of hopfions with exact characteristics of Hopf vibration, Hopf index, and Hopf mapping from real-space vector beams to homotopic hyperspheres representing polarization states. They experimentally generated photonic hopfions with on-demand high-order Hopf indices and independently controlled topological textures, including Néel-, Bloch-, and antiskyrmionic types. They also demonstrated a robust free-space transport of photonic hopfions, thus showing the potential of hopfions for developing optical topological informatics and communications. According to the researchers their work provides a theoretical […]