Skyrmionic Polarization Textures in Dielectric Media Demonstrate Chern Insulator Topology

Physics > Optics arXiv:2510.09427 (physics) [Submitted on 10 Oct 2025] Title:Skyrmionic polarization textures in structured dielectric planar media Authors:Francesco Di Colandrea, Lorenzo Marrucci, Filippo Cardano View a PDF of the paper titled Skyrmionic polarization textures in structured dielectric planar media, by Francesco Di Colandrea and 2 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Skyrmionic patterns of optical fields have recently emerged across diverse photonic platforms. Here, we show that such textures also arise in the polarization eigenstates of light propagation through flat dielectric devices with an engineered, space-dependent optic-axis orientation. We focus on two-dimensional periodic structures, where propagation through multiple devices maps onto quantum dynamics on a synthetic optical lattice. Adopting the condensed-matter framework, a spatial period defines an effective Brillouin zone, and polarization eigenstates can be grouped in two bands, with the role of energy played by the opposite phase delay. When such eigenstates exhibit skyrmionic textures, the corresponding lattice model shows the topology of a Chern insulator. These structures result from the interaction between the optical field and the medium and do not reflect a topological structure of the medium itself. We validate these concepts in a system of three tunable liquid-crystal metasurfaces. Using quantum process tomography based on supervised machine learning, we reconstruct the polarization eigenmodes over one spatial period. We identify configurations of the devices' parameters that lead to topologically non-trivial bands, where we directly observe skyrmionic eigenpolarization textures. Along the analogy with condensed matter, we also extract local observables of lattice models, such as the Berry curvature and the quantum metric. We finally report a numerical simulation of an all-optical quantum Hall effect emerging when light propagates through a sequence of such devices, arranged so as to mimic the effect of an external force on the lattice. Subjects: Optics (physics.optics) Cite as: arXiv:2510.09427 [physics.optics] (or arXiv:2510.09427v1 [physics.optics] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.09427 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Francesco Di Colandrea [view email] [v1] Fri, 10 Oct 2025 14:33:49 UTC (2,088 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Skyrmionic polarization textures in structured dielectric planar media, by Francesco Di Colandrea and 2 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: physics.optics new | recent | 2025-10 Change to browse by: physics References & Citations NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)