Toroidal vortices, also known as vortex rings, are whirling, closed-loop disturbances that form a characteristic ring shape in liquids and gases and propagate in a direction that is perpendicular to the plane of the ring. They are well-studied structures and commonly found in various fluid and gas flow scenarios in nature, for example in the human heart, underwater air bubbles and volcanic eruptions^1,2,3. Here we report the experimental observation of a photonic toroidal vortex as a new solution to Maxwell’s equations, generated by the use of conformal mapping^4,5,6,7. The resulting light field has a helical phase that twists around a closed loop, leading to an azimuthal local orbital angular momentum density. The preparation of such an intriguing state of light may offer insights for exploring the behaviour of toroidal vortices in other disciplines and find important applications in light–matter interactions, optical manipulation, photonic symmetry and topology, and quantum information^{8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17}.

环形涡旋，也称为涡环，是一种旋转的闭环扰动，在液体和气体中形成特征环形，并沿垂直于环平面的方向传播。它们是经过充分研究的结构，通常存在于自然界中的各种流体和气体流动场景中，例如在人类心脏、水下气泡和火山喷发^1,2,3中。在这里，我们报告了光子环形涡旋的实验观察，作为麦克斯韦方程组的新解，通过使用保形映射^{4,5,6,7生成}. 由此产生的光场具有围绕闭合环扭曲的螺旋相位，从而导致方位角局部轨道角动量密度。这种有趣的光状态的制备可以为探索其他学科中环形涡旋的行为提供见解，并在光物质相互作用、光学操纵、光子对称性和拓扑结构以及量子信息中找到重要应用^{8,9,10,11 ,12,13,14,15,16,17}。