A topological lattice of plasmonic merons

Topology is an intrinsic property of the orbital symmetry and elemental spin–orbit interaction, but also, intriguingly, designed vectorial optical fields can break existing symmetries, to impose (dress) topology through coherent interactions with trivial materials. Through photonic spin–orbit interaction, light can transiently turn on topological interactions, such as chiral chemistry, or induce non-Abelian physics in matter. Employing electromagnetic simulations and ultrafast, time-resolved photoemission electron microscopy, we describe the geometric transformation of a normally incident plane wave circularly polarized light carrying a defined spin into surface plasmon polariton field carrying orbital angular momentum which converges into an array of plasmonic vortices with defined spin textures. Numerical simulations show how within each vortex domain, the photonic spin–orbit interaction molds the plasmonic orbital angular momentum into quantum chiral spin angular momentum textures resembling those of a magnetic meron quasiparticles. We experimentally examine the dynamics of such meron plasmonic spin texture lattice by recording the ultrafast nanofemto plasmonic field evolution with deep subwavelength resolution and sub-optical cycle time accuracy from which we extract the linear polarization, L-line singularity distribution, that defines the periodic lattice boundaries. Our results reveal how vectorial optical fields can impress their topologically nontrivial spin textures by coherent dressing or chiral excitations of matter.