Photonic skyrmion spin textures on meta-surface with the impact of loss and geometry

Abstract

Photonic skyrmions characterized by topological nontrivial electromagnetic textures have triggered enormous interest, exhibiting promising applications in optical information storage and precision metrology. The skyrmion generation on meta-surface is important for further developments of the skyrmion-based applications; however, it has received limited attention, with a particular lack of investigation into both intrinsic loss and geometry, which are crucial factors. Here, we demonstrate a photonic skyrmion spin lattice on a well-designed metallic nanohole array, examining the influence of inherent loss and geometry of meta-surface. In consideration of these factors, we show the broadened excitation wavelength tolerance for the photonic skyrmion spin lattices, which are also found to be robust against the inherent loss and wave-vector mismatch to a certain degree. This work provides new insights into the underlying mechanisms of the topological spin textures, as well as in developing applications in optical sensing and high-resolution imaging.