Researchers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have found a simple way to create optical skyrmions — tiny, hedgehog-like swirling patterns in light — by shining a laser at a small circular disc to harness the 'Poisson spot,' a diffraction effect first predicted in 1818.

Led by Assistant Professor Shen Yijie, the team showed the setup generates up to four related topological light patterns at once, including spin, Stokes, electric-field, and magnetic-field skyrmions, without relying on the costly engineered metamaterials that have typically confined this kind of research to specialized labs.

Skyrmions are considered a leading candidate for next-generation data storage, communications, and computing because their stable, swirling structure can encode information more densely and resist noise. The findings were published in the journal Optica.