Generation of Optical Skyrmions with Tunable Topological Textures

In recent times, the optical-analogous skyrmions, topological quasiparticles with sophisticated vectorial structures in light, have received an increasing amount of interest. Here we propose theortically and experimentally a generalized family of these, the tunable optical skyrmions, unveiling a new mechanism to transform between various skyrmionic topologies, including Néel, Bloch, and antiskyrmion types, via simple parametric tuning. In addition, a geometric Skyrme–Poincaré representation is proposed to visualize the complete topological evolution of tunable skyrmions, which we term the skyrmion torus. To generate the tunable optical skyrmions experimentally, we implemented a digital hologram system based on a spatial light modulator, the results of which show great agreement with our theoretical predictions.