Power-Exponent-Accelerated Ring-Shaped Optical Skyrmion Textures

Abstract Optical skyrmions provide a versatile platform for structuring the topology of light through spatially varying polarization textures. In most optical skyrmion textures, however, the azimuthal texture evolution remains linear and uniform, restricting the programmable control of local polarization gradients. Here, we introduce power-exponent phase modulation for generating ring-shaped optical skyrmions with accelerated azimuthal texture evolution. The nonlinear phase modulation reshapes the polarization topology while preserving the annular intensity distribution and produces a spatially nonuniform and enhanced azimuthal polarization gradient. We experimentally realize conventional and power-exponent-accelerated Néel-type, Bloch-type, and Anti ring-shaped skyrmion textures and further demonstrate higher-order accelerated textures with effective skyrmion numbers up to 20. Free-space propagation measurements confirm the preservation of both the topological texture and the enhanced polarization-gradient profile. Our results establish a programmable route to intensity-invariant skyrmion-texture engineering, with potential applications in polarization-gradient optical manipulation, vectorial optical tweezers, and topological photonic encoding.