Ultrafast microscopy of a twisted plasmonic spin skyrmion

Abstract

We report a transient plasmonic spin skyrmion topological quasiparticle within surface plasmon polariton vortices, which is described by analytical modeling and imaging of its formation by ultrafast interferometric time-resolved photoemission electron microscopy. Our model finds a twisted skyrmion spin texture on the vacuum side of a metal/vacuum interface and its integral opposite counterpart in the metal side. The skyrmion pair forming a hedgehog texture is associated with co-gyrating anti-parallel electric and magnetic fields, which form intense pseudoscalar E·B focus that breaks the local time-reversal symmetry and can drive magnetoelectric responses of interest to the axion physics. Through nonlinear two-photon photoemission, we record attosecond precision images of the plasmonic vectorial vortex field evolution with nanometer spatial and femtosecond temporal (nanofemto) resolution, from which we derive the twisted plasmonic spin skyrmion topological textures, their boundary, and topological charges; the modeling and experimental measurements establish a quantized integer photonic topological charge that is stable over the optical generation pulse envelope.