Toroidal light pulses are few-cycle pulses with doughnut-like electromagnetic field configuration and non-separable, “entangled”-like spatiotemporal structure. Toroidal light pulses exhibit self-similar and skyrmionic topological features and exotic propagation dynamics including isodiffracting and non-diffracting effects. Following the recent observation of such pulses, this talk will report on metamaterial-based schemes for their generation and detection and introduce tomography approaches for characterizing their “entangled” spatiotemporal profile. Implications for light-matter interactions, in particular in the context of toroidal electrodynamics, non-radiating configurations, and Lorentz non-reciprocity, will also be discussed.
