All-Optical Generation of Multifunctional and Tunable Longitudinal Magnetization Textures

An all-optical strategy for creating multifunctional and tunable longitudinal magnetization textures is demonstrated. This is realized by flexibly engineering the coherent interferences of two counter-propagating azimuthally polarized vortex beams possessing on-demand phase and amplitude encoding in a 4 pi optical microscopic setup. In doing so, one can access not only the regular longitudinal magnetization patterns including bright spheroid/needle, dark cage/channel, and bright-dark alternating chain/comb, but also the exotic twisted counterparts with controllable number of turns, thereby making versatile magnetization on the targeted magneto-optical media with integrated footprint possible. The presented research findings may hold tremendous potential in multidimensional high density and low energy consumption optomagnetic storage and photonics of spin, and beyond.