Phys.org October 17, 2020 Modern beam shaping techniques have enabled the generation of optical fields displaying a wealth of structural features. Due to their robustness against external perturbations, topological invariants in physical systems are increasingly being considered to encode information. Hence, structured light with topological properties could potentially be used for such purposes. An international team of researchers (Canada, USA – MIT, Israel) has experimentally demonstrated structures known as framed knots within optical polarization fields. They developed a protocol in which the topological properties of framed knots are used in conjunction with prime factorization to encode information…read more. Open Access […]