Null electromagnetic fields from dilatation and rotation transformations of the hopfion

Abstract

The application of topology concepts to Maxwell equations has led to the developing of the whole area of electromagnetic knots. In this paper, we apply some symmetry transformations to a particular electromagnetic knot, the hopfion field, to get a new set of knotted solutions with the properties of being null. The new fields are obtained by a homothetic transformation (dilatation) and a rotation of the hopfion, and we study the constraints that the transformations must fulfill in order to generate valid electromagnetic fields propagating in a vacuum. We make use of the Bateman construction and calculate the four-potentials and the electromagnetic helicities. It is observed that the topology of the field lines does not seem to be conserved as it is for the hopfion.