Optical skyrmions, quasiparticles that are characterized by the topologically nontrivial vectorial textures of optical parameters such as the electromagnetic field, Stokes parameters, and spin angular momentum, have aroused great attention recently. New dimensions for optical information processing, transfer, and storage have become possible, and developing multiple schemes for manipulating the topological states of skyrmions, thus, is urgent. Here we propose an approach toward achieving dynamic modulation of skyrmions via changing the field symmetry and adding chirality. We demonstrate that field symmetry governs the skyrmionic transformation between skyrmions and merons, whereas material chirality modulates the twist degree of fields and spins and takes control of the Néel-type–Bloch-type skyrmionic transition. Remarkably, the enantioselective twist of skyrmions and merons results from the longitudinal spin arising from the chirality-induced splitting of the hyperboloid in the momentum space. Our investigation, therefore, acts to enrich the portfolio of optical quasiparticles. The chiral route to topological state transitions will deepen our understanding of light–matter interaction and pave the way for chiral sensing, optical tweezers, and topological phase transitions in quantum matter.

Stokes vector direct detection is a promising, cost-effective technology for short-distance communication applications. Here, we design and fabricate a spin-dependent liquid crystal grating to detect light polarization states. By separating the circular and linear components of incident light, the polarization states can be resolved with accuracy of up to 0.25°. We achieved Stokes vector direct detection of quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK), 8PSK, and 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation signals with 32, 16, and 16 GBd rates, respectively. We integrated the system, including the grating, photodetectors, and optical elements, on a miniaturized printed circuit board and demonstrated high-speed optical communications with 16 GBd rate QPSK signals.

This study shows that convolutional neural networks (CNNs) can be used to improve the performance of structured illumination microscopy to enable it to reconstruct a super-resolution image using three instead of nine raw frames, which is the standard number of frames required to this end. Owing to the isotropy of the fluorescence group, the correlation between the high-frequency information in each direction of the spectrum is obtained by training the CNNs. A high-precision super-resolution image can thus be reconstructed using accurate data from three image frames in one direction. This allows for gentler super-resolution imaging at higher speeds and weakens phototoxicity in the imaging process.

The digital micro-mirror device (DMD)-based optical switch has the advantages of high-speed channels reallocation, miniaturization, stability, and large capacity for short reach optical communication in the datacenter. However, thermal turbulent atmosphere in the datacenter would cause perturbations and channel crosstalk for the optical switch. The self-healing optical beams such as the Bessel beams have the non-diffraction property to mitigate the turbulence issue. Here, we propose and demonstrate a Bessel beams enabled DMD-based optical switch to improve the stability and performance of optical communication in turbulent atmosphere. We statistically characterize the beam wanders of the Gaussian and Bessel beams in turbulent atmosphere at temperatures of 60°C and 80°C. We build the two-channel optical switch communication system and measure the bit error rate of the 15 Gbit/s on–off keying signals transmitted by the Gaussian and Bessel beams at temperatures of 60°C and 80°C, respectively. The optical switch using the Bessel beams shows lower bit error rates with weaker fluctuations compared with the Gaussian beams. The DMD-based optical switch using the Bessel beams has the potential for practical optical communication applications in the datacenter.