Control of optical skyrmionic textures via the Pancharatnam-Berry phase

Skyrmions are topological quasiparticles characterized by nontrivial topological textures. The manipulation of topological textures has attracted plenty of attention in recent years. In this study we demonstrate a geometric-phase-based method for dynamically controlling optical skyrmionic textures. By introducing the Pancharatnam-Berry phase through engineering closed paths of polarization evolution on the Poincar\'e sphere using waveplate combinations, we achieved the conversion between different skyrmionic topological textures. This geometric-phase-dependent strategy enables flexible manipulation of topological textures, paving the way for understanding topology transformations and engineering optical skyrmions for applications in information processing.