Latest Research Achievements in Photonic Toroidal Vortex made Professor Zhan Qiwen

On June 2rd (Beijing), the Future Optical Laboratory led by Academician Zhuang Songlin, USST, witnessed a new breakthrough made by Professor Zhan Qiwen. He reported the experimental observation of a photonic toroidal vortex as a new solution to Maxwell’s equations, generated by the use of conformal mapping. The research paper titled “Toroidal vortices of light” was published in international top journal: Nature Photonics.

The resulting light field has a helical phase that twists around a closed loop, leading to an azimuthal local orbital angualr momentum density. The preparation of such an intriguing state of light may offer insights for exploring the behavior of toroidal vortices in other disciplines and find important applications in light-matter interactions, optical manipulation, photonic symmetry and topology, and quantum information. The research won the support from the National Nature Science Foundation of China (NSFC).