Intrinsic Meron Spin Textures in Generic Focused Fields

Abstract: Optical spin textures with nontrivial topology hold promise for structured light and photonic information processing, yet their generation typically relies heavily on externally structured light with care. This raises questions about their universal existence and true robustness. Here, we uncover and experimentally verify a meron-like spin texture that emerges intrinsically in focused fields, without any wavefront engineering. This intrinsic meron spin texture, unlike their externally engineered counterparts, exhibits exceptional robustness against a wide range of inputs, including partially polarized and spatially disordered pupils corrupted by decoherence and depolarization. We attribute its resilience to topological protection from phase vortices in the focal field. Our findings reveal a naturally occurring spin structure that is intrinsic to the focused field with exceptional robustness against noise, which complements the existing externally engineered ones. It offers new ingredients into topological spin textures in optics and enriches their potentials for disorder-resilient photonic applications.