Observation of Moiré Plasmonic Skyrmion Clusters

Abstract

Skyrmions are topological defects belonging to nontrivial homotopy classes in particle theory. Their remarkably stable topology has recently been observed in electromagnetic waves. For the evanescent fields near a surface, this has been realized so far only for elementary optical skyrmions, with a fixed skyrmion number. Here we report, both in theory and experiment, the concept of moiré plasmonic skyrmion clusters, where multi-skyrmions are nested to form a large optical skyrmion cluster. By leveraging twistronics engineering of plasmonic nanostructures, we demonstrate both crystallized and quasi-crystallized optical skyrmion lattices, revealing an unprecedented degree of topological control. In a misaligned composite nanostructure, the rapid inverting of optical skyrmion number is achieved, which is explained by a lattice model. This topological change of moiréplasmonic skyrmion clusters can serve as a precise beacon of the relative alignment deviation between composite nanostructures.

A related outstanding study on moire optical skyrmion superlattice in space-time domain appeared: Nat. Phys. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-025-02873-1