Supertoroidal Skyrmionic Light Pulses

We report on a family of toroidal pulses, termed supertoroidal light pulses (STLPS), which exhibit matryoshka-like electromagnetic field configurations and topological structure analogous to skyrmion quasiparticles in condensed matter that to date have not been observed in electromagnetic pulses. STLPs are a generalization of the toroidal light pulses (TLPs) investigated by Hellwarth and Nouchi in 1996 and come from a more general class of pulses obtained as superpositions of "electromagnetic directed-energy pulse trains" (EDEPTs) by Ziolkowski in 1989.