Researchers watch the dynamics of plasmonic skyrmions made from light on ultra-smooth gold platelets for the first time

The destructive force of a tornado occurs due to the extremely high rotational speeds in its center, which is called a vortex. Surprisingly, similar effects are predicted for light that travels along an atomically smooth gold surface, which can exhibit angular momentum and vortices. Researchers at the Universities of Stuttgart and Duisburg-Essen and the University of Melbourne (Australia) have now succeeded for the first time in filming these vortex patterns, which are called skyrmions, on the nanometer scale. The journal Science reports this groundbreaking work in its issue of April 24, 2020.

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