- Accepted Paper
Space-time electron wave packets with tunable skyrmion textures
APS Open Sci. - Accepted 9 September, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/pnvl-7bx7
APS Open Sci. - Accepted 9 September, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/pnvl-7bx7
Space-Time Wave Packets (STWPs) have enabled numerous nontrivial properties, such as tunable group velocities, nondiffraction and nonlocal spin textures in optical fields. However, this has not been properly studied in matter waves. Here, we investigate free-electron STWPs, which are propagation-invariant and group-velocity-tunable matter wave packets, constructed by constraining the spatiotemporal spectrum of the electron wavefunction in momentum space. Due to the unique dispersion of free-electrons, the electron STWP can carry two different topologies, and host both meron and skyrmion topological textures in momentum space. We demonstrate the topological phase transitions and tunable skyrmion numbers by spectral geometry tuning. We also show the topologically robust propagation of the electron pulses and corresponding real-space skyrmionic expectation value textures encoded within each single electron wavefunction. Our results open a platform for topological free-electron wavepackets uses in sensing and information transfer.
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