Light-controlled skyrmions and torons as reconfigurable particles

Abstract

Topological solitons, such as skyrmions, arise in field theories of systems ranging from Bose-Einstein condensates to optics, particle physics, and cosmology, but they are rarely accessible experimentally. Chiral nematic liquid crystals provide a platform to study skyrmions because of their natural tendency to form twisted structures arising from the lack of mirror symmetry at the molecular level. However, large-scale dynamic control and technological utility of skyrmions remain limited. Combining experiments and numerical modeling of chiral liquid crystals with optically controlled helical pitch, we demonstrate that low-intensity, unstructured light can control stability, dimensions, interactions, spatial patterning, self-assembly, and dynamics of these topological solitons.

References in corpus (5)

• Spontaneous Skyrmion Ground States in Magnetic Metals
• Two-dimensional skyrmions and other solitonic structures in confinement-frustrated chiral nematics
• Triclinic nematic colloidal crystals from competing elastic and electrostatic interactions
• Elastic colloidal monopoles and reconfigurable self-assembly in liquid crystals
• Self-assembled nematic colloidal motors powered by light