Nondiffracting supertoroidal pulses and optical "Kármán vortex streets".
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38849349.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-48927-5 and PMC identifier 11161654.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Supertoroidal light pulses, as space-time nonseparable electromagnetic waves, exhibit unique topological properties including skyrmionic configurations, fractal-like singularities, and energy backflow in free space, which however do not survive upon propagation. Here, we introduce the non-diffracting supertoroidal pulses (NDSTPs) with propagation-robust skyrmionic and vortex field configurations that persists over arbitrary propagation distances. Intriguingly, the field structure of NDSTPs has a similarity with the von Kármán vortex street, a pattern of swirling vortices in fluid and gas dynamics with staggered singularities that can stably propagate forward. NDSTPs will be of interest as directed channels for information and energy transfer applications.