Optical Twisted Phase Strips

Twisted strips, known for Möbius strips, are three-dimensional (3D) topological structures describing how a surface can be twisted in space. The spatial configuration can be readily demonstrated using a rectangular strip of paper and is well constructed as liquid crystal defect and optical microcavity structures. Here, we use a spatiotemporal light field based on the toroidal vortex to show that the dynamic phase structure can form topological objects with controllable twists number. The structured light field makes full use of the degree of freedom of the high-dimensional parameter space and establishes the connection between optical strips, optical knots, and optical Hopfions. The preparation of such topological structured light may provide new insight for the complex singular optics and find applications in high-dimensional information encoding.