Skyrmion Photonics: From Topological Fundamentals to Integrated Devices and Critical Assessment

ABSTRACT

Skyrmions, topological textures originally discovered in magnetic systems, have recently emerged as a vibrant research frontier in optics and photonics. By exploiting the fully vectorial nature of light, optical and photonic skyrmions create localized field configurations with non‐trivial topological charges, opening promising avenues for robust information encoding, super‐resolution imaging, and topological computation. This review provides a comprehensive survey of this evolving field, tracing the historical development from early demonstrations of evanescent surface fields to the latest chip‐scale integrated photonic devices. The text systematically covers the underlying theoretical foundations, generation methods, numerical simulation tools, and future application prospects. Crucially, this work provides a rigorous and critical assessment of the state of the art, foregrounding unresolved questions regarding the actual extent of topological protection in realistic physical devices governed by material loss, structural disorder, and finite coherence. The analysis explicitly examines the fragility of skyrmion textures in non‐Hermitian systems, the impact of fabrication imperfections on device yield, and the current absence of clear application‐level advantages over conventional optical approaches. Concluding with a forward‐looking roadmap, the review identifies the most promising research trajectories and the critical technology readiness milestones required to transition skyrmion photonics from laboratory demonstrations to scalable practical technologies.